


More Alike

by spaceyquill



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Author hates canon's tendency to dumb down the bad guys and will correct them accordingly, But maybe they'll admit, Canon divergence in the fact that shades of gray exist in this fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friends to people who can't admit they have feelings for one another, Gen, Rewrite of seasons 3 and 4, Rotating POV, Slow Burn, Tighten Your Bolts, We may lose some characters along the way but I believe in the reader's ability to persevere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-08-06 11:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16386737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceyquill/pseuds/spaceyquill
Summary: Malachor tore a rift through the heart of the Ghost crew, taking Hera’s support network with it. So of course she wouldn’t notice Ezra exhibiting peculiar new Force techniques when she’s trying to stay afloat of her own responsibilities, a more demanding task now that the person she used to lean on is hardly present.While the wider rebellion attempts to uncover mysterious Imperial plans—an objective which overshadows the attack on Lothal’s Imperial factory to Ezra’s growing frustration—a new Grand Admiral enters the picture, and proceeds to outmaneuver Hera’s usual tactics. The more Hera studies Thrawn in order to discover a weakness, the more she realizes an unnerving truth: for as much as she hates what Thrawn stands for, they might not be as different as she first assumed.





	1. Prologue

Spinning red blades.

_This is all your fault, Ezra._

A Sith lord.

_Why didn’t you do anything?_

The unrest that bled out of the war-ravaged ground on Malachor.

_Why were you the only one to come back unharmed?_

The words ricocheted inside his head, painted in all the most familiar voices—sharp, from Hera; anguished, from Rex; confused, from Sabine and Zeb; demanding, from Kanan.

But no one had said any of the words Ezra repeated to himself.

In fact, no one had said anything. A ripple of shock had crackled through the air when Ezra helped an injured Kanan off the _Phantom,_ leaving everyone who was waiting to welcome them back silent, mouths hanging open. But the emotion watering their eyes and bowing their bodies conveyed what he’d twisted into words.

Hera had whisked Kanan off to Chopper Base’s medbay. Sabine and Zeb had stared with the same bleak expression Ezra must have worn, because Commander Sato pushed the mandatory mission debrief to the next day. And the others left him be.

So now Ezra sat in his room, the soft light from the holocron not enough to calm his chaotic thoughts. Only ascribing blame to himself could make sense of how everything had turned out so disastrously.

All they had wanted when they set out for Malachor was a secret—any secret—of how to defeat the Sith. Now Ahsoka was gone and Kanan injured, and a weighty key sat in Ezra’s hands to a temple that had been coming down around him as he escaped.

The cacophony of disparate voices suddenly melded together until the singular thought of _we should never have gone in the first place_ rang bright in his mind.

He focused on the holocron in his hand just to try to evict the noise. Ezra turned it around, all sharp corners and steep angles, but unlike Kanan’s, this one didn’t open when he concentrated.

Then again, Ezra couldn’t really concentrate on anything right now, and his frustration spiked.

The room cooled, and the next breath he exhaled came out as fog.

“Well,” a voice said. “How interesting.” There in the room with him was the red and black man he’d helped on Malachor.

“Maul?!” Ezra jumped to his feet, holocron clenched in a fist. Echoes of Kanan recounting his injury surfaced in Ezra’s mind only to be broken against every other thought still raging. “How’d you get in here?”

“I’m nowhere near you,” Maul said. His nonchalance at the situation felt so wrong that Ezra wondered if it was feigned. “This? Is a link. A Force bond.”

Ezra reached out his hand only for it to pass straight through Maul as easily as a hologram. The surprise at least stuttered Ezra’s mind to a halt.

“How… how come I’ve never done this with my master?” His voice sounded all too loud in the sudden silence.

Maul shrugged. “Impossible to say. I don’t know what connected us, but how fortunate we are when _you’re_ the one with the holocron. It can still be immeasurably helpful.”

“I can’t even open it.”

“Of course you can. Just like with the temple door, listen to your emotions, apprentice.”

“I’m not your apprentice!” Ezra snapped. Emotion—finally something besides irritating calmness—flashed in Maul’s yellow eyes, but with transparent effort at calming himself, it dulled.

 _“Try.”_ The word hissed through sharp, clenched teeth.

It went against everything Kanan had taught him, but the holocron was the only proof they had been to a Sith temple to begin with.

It was all they had to go on.

Ezra sat back on the bottom bunk and cupped the holocron in his hands, concentrating. Just like struggling with the heavy temple door, flexing the darker side of the Force consumed more energy and emitted only frustration—like he was struggling to lift something small that refused to budge. But just like with the temple door, he opened himself to his emotions and it was as if the Force itself rallied to aid him. He felt stronger, more attuned, limitless, free.

Unlike the Jedi holocron that opened for a tranquil mind, the Sith holocron required a fight; for Ezra to assert his will and pry open the device. Tendrils of the Force dug like fingertips into the uneven surface, and every wrenching pull felt like he was about to tear a corner clean off.

Finally, the top of the holocron spun and levitated above the rest of it, releasing a feminine whisper like vapor that promised powerful knowledge from ages past.

Maul’s smile glinted in the red light. “And the secrets to defeating the Sith are once more within reach.”


	2. Chapter 1

**Six months later...**  

Atollon’s pale moonlight illuminated the _Phantom_ ’s empty dock, and all Hera could do was hug her arms as she stood there in the doorway to what should have been her auxiliary ship. This was the third time she’d checked, because each time she walked away, she convinced herself that maybe its absence was some dream. Some stress-induced delusion.

No, the _Phantom_ was really gone.

Phoenix Squadron had returned from Reklam hours ago, but still Ezra’s shock at Hera suspending him replayed in her mind. The self-doubt in his eyes, the hurt in his voice. But more than the defense he argued—that they returned from Reklam Station in one piece with Y-wing bombers—her own feelings overshadowed her memory. Her anger at Ezra changing plans so drastically without approval, her anxiety at having to assemble the fleet to save him, and her paralyzing _fear_ that she could have lost someone. That final one perhaps contributed the most to stoking the queasy feeling in her stomach, keeping it churning even now in the safety of Chopper Base.

The dark cockpit of the _Ghost_ welcomed her back with a coldness that shot straight through her flight suit—soothing compared to the thoughts eddying in her mind—and her chair embraced her in the hug her body ached for.

Hera had to remind herself that the mission had been a complete success: five Y-wings acquired, her crew unscathed, and Ezra managed to capture Commander Brom Titus—once an admiral of an Imperial Interdictor—as a prisoner of the rebellion. Titus now inhabited one of the cells in Atollon’s brig, next to Fenn Rau. So why did this weariness weigh her down as if they had just lost?

Part of Hera wondered if she’d been too hard on Ezra. After all, she could remember several prior missions led by herself or Kanan that went sideways almost immediately. But there was something about Ezra gambling with initiative that left a bad taste in her mouth, especially considering his change in attitude ever since—

“Hey,” a gruff voice said from behind. Hera jumped out of her thoughts, but the person taking up the doorway wasn’t who she expected.

“Hey, Zeb. Still up?”

He pawed inside and dropped into the co-pilot’s chair, flashing her a pointy grin almost lost in the dark. “Yeah. Just got a report from rebels in a sister cell—Lasats were found in the Mygeeto System.”

“Has it been verified?”

“Well, not officially. But it’s pretty cut and dry.” Over the past few months, a positive corroboration had been a green light for Zeb, who took the _Phantom_ the handful of times Lasat reports were funneled to their attention. One or two of the reports had turned out to be false alarms: hornless Gotals or stylized Wookiees. But the others resulted in Zeb escorting more of his species to Lira San, a planet the rescued Lasats had no idea even existed. Now with the _Phantom_ gone, the only other ship with exact coordinates to Lira San was the _Ghost._

“I’m sorry, Zeb, but we just don’t have the time to make a round trip to Wild Space.”

Zeb cast a glance out the transpairsteel window at the new Y-wings that dotted the illuminated landing zone, squeezed where they would fit between stacked supply crates and neighboring ships. Hera knew him; he wanted to bring up how their cell had dropped everything to rush to the rescue of Ezra’s mission, risking their best ships just to salvage five outdated fighters. But instead of voicing anything, his ears just drooped.

Hera reached out to put a hand on his furry shoulder. “Once our operation tempo slows down some, we can look into this.”

Like ripples in a pond spreading fallen leaves to opposite banks, the _Ghost_ crew had drifted apart over recent months. Ever since Malachor, Kanan had withdrawn into himself, Ezra doubled down on Jedi practice, Sabine visited Fenn Rau in the brig with greater frequency, Zeb shot off to different parts of the galaxy when the rare report of Lasats came in, and all Hera could do was watch. Watch as her crew voluntarily strayed just out of reach.

“For the rebellion, right?” he muttered.

“Zeb—” But he was already up and exiting the cockpit before Hera could say any more. She slumped into her chair, hugging herself.

Things should have gotten better once they found a base. Here, they didn’t have to constantly check over their shoulders for patrolling stormtroopers or hide their ship from roving Star Destroyers. Atollon allowed them a peace of mind never experienced to this extent before.

But her crew had never been this distant.

With Kanan surfacing from his self-inflicted exile to help save Ezra, a faint hope had fluttered in Hera’s chest that at least _he_ was back. But directly after returning from Reklam, Kanan once more left. To the wilderness or an unbothered spot on base or wherever he sequestered himself when he wanted to meditate in peace.

“Wah WAH wopwopwop.” Chopper rolled into the cockpit and nudged into her leg until she paid him attention. Hera patted his flat dome. Chopper was the one member of her crew who had remained by her side while everyone else drifted away, with an unusually low amount of complaining.

“How’s Ezra doing?”

Chopper just shook his head.

-0-

The emptiness penetrating Ezra’s shared room felt more like he’d walked straight out an airlock and into the vacuum of space. The familiar, warm haze that radiated from the Sith holocron was absent, and the memory of Kanan taking it barreled back to the forefront of his mind.

Ezra clenched his fists. That artifact had helped him improve when Kanan hadn’t spoken to him for months, and every successful mission was a testament to Ezra’s growing powers. But beyond that, the holocron had been _his_.

After a vented sigh in an attempt to clear his mind, Ezra decided it wasn’t a total loss since—

A chill dampened the room, as if he was standing under Atollon’s night sky staring down a stormfront. He felt pride—outside of himself, someone else’s, settling around his shoulders like a fine cape.

“Well. Look how you’ve improved, apprentice,” that permeating voice congratulated. Ezra saw Maul standing there in his room, affected by the ambiance of Ezra’s surroundings even though Maul couldn’t see them. And neither could Ezra see where Maul truly existed in the galaxy—limitations they’d determined during their months of sharing this Force bond. “I sense your power, more concentrated than before. _Good.”_

Ezra allowed himself a smile; he’d long since given up refuting Maul’s claim to an apprentice after half a year of imitating Maul’s lightsaber techniques and following his routine for harnessing emotions.

But then the memories of his completed mission bled into Hera suspending him, and not even Maul’s validation could keep Ezra’s shoulders from slumping. “Yeah, but still not good enough. I was supposed to bring the rebellion a squadron’s worth of ships and I lost more than half of them, including the _Phantom_.”

“I do not require perfection in order to praise you. Don’t hold yourself to the standard of a master; you’re only learning.” Maul’s tone was placating as ever, and the sincerity wafting from him dulled Ezra’s self doubt. “But the more power you gain, the more you can control these situations to your benefit in the future. And you’ve come so far already, my apprentice.”

Ezra sat on Zeb’s bunk, and somehow Maul sat next to him.

“I haven’t heard from you in awhile… where’ve you been?” Ezra asked, any conversation an excuse to not dwell on the echoes of earlier events.

“I searched for the Dromund System, but the coordinates in the holocron are outdated.”

Out of everyone who had survived Malachor, it was surprisingly Maul alone who remained steadfast in the determination to find a means of defeating the Sith—a drive no longer shared by Kanan. Ever since his injury, Kanan’s priorities had scaled back to individual meditation. Ezra of course wanted to destroy the Sith, but lacked the means of helping the search, leaving Maul to continue the task himself.

“The holocron’s wrong?”

“The holocron is _old,”_ Maul said. “Since its creation during the Sith Empire, the galaxy has shifted. But if I see its coordinates to known systems, I can calculate the drift. Open it for me.”

Ezra braced himself. “Kanan took it.” Blazing yellow eyes shot in Ezra’s direction, and even though they weren’t aimed at Ezra he still felt the heat behind them.

“As always,” he growled, “the Jedi are directly impeding me. I can’t find the temples in the Dromund System without it, Ezra. I need it back.”

“I’ll look for it. I’m sorry,” Ezra said with a wince. The emotion radiating off of Maul burned with the same ferocity as when Hera had saved him on Reklam Station—she’d been _livid_. But in another second, all that intense feeling pulled back into Maul like an imploding star, to burn contained in his veins. His voice was calm when he spoke again.

“Release this _guilt_ I feel in you, for it’s not your fault. I have faith you’ll find it again, apprentice.”

“But in the meantime, we’ve got nothing to go on,” Ezra sighed. He perked up with a sudden thought. “Kanan’s Jedi holocron—I could open that up!”

“No; the Jedi would _not_ list any Sith world in their directories. Even when they believed them to be extinct, the Jedi would rather bury any trace of them than acknowledge their enemy.” Maul regarded him closely. “Which reminds me, what news of those inquisitors?”

“None. It’s like they dropped off the plane of the galaxy. The rebellion’s completely forgotten about them, because they’re so busy getting ships or fuel and… they lied to me, y’know,” Ezra said, his voice dropping to a mutter. “They said these Y-wings would be part of a strike force to attack the Imperial factory on my home planet, but… we brought them back—my plan saved any of them at all—and Hera said all these new ships were going to a different rebel group entirely.”

“Such is the way of war,” Maul said, with far too little emotion in his voice. Ezra shot a glare his way.

“This is my planet we’re talking about. My home!” He jumped up and stalked the room, emotions he’d kept confined to the back of his mind now unleashed to warm his entire body. “Lothal’s been under Imperial rule since as long as I can remember and the rebellion keeps sitting on their hands, feeding me one broken promise after the next, because they can’t just admit they’re not strong enough to help!”

The door to the room slid open and Zeb entered, one brow quirked over his bright green eyes. “Talkin’ to yourself again?” He moved to his bunk and climbed in, not noticing Maul. But when Ezra looked back at their bunks, Maul was gone.

A weariness tugged at him. Ezra still had no idea what that form of connection was or how to control it, but he usually came away from it mentally fatigued.

Maul’s voice echoed in some corner of his senses. _“Good,_ apprentice. Embrace that frustration, breathe that fire into your lungs and let it motivate you. Your emotions give you power—stop shying away from them.”

Ezra inhaled, trying to pull the anger that made his fists shake straight into his core, the way Maul had done. His emotions drew in, leaving his body energized in their wake, and granting Ezra a peace of mind for the first time that night since returning to Atollon.

The room warmed. The connection really was cut this time.

-0-

The corvette ship orbiting Atollon served as both a roving guard for the base nestled planetside and also the cell’s brig, separating Phoenix’s prisoners from a chance of escaping into the base.

Sabine passed Brom Titus’ holding room without a glance and stopped at Fenn Rau’s. The guard on duty flipped off the ray door with a security card, and flipped it back on after Sabine had entered.

“Again?” Rau said, his voice as flat as his eyebrows.

“Got something better you need to do?” It would’ve been impossible to explain to non-Mandalorians, but even though she and Rau didn’t get along well, spending time with him was—strangely—a comfort. There was an unspoken understanding between them, hailing from the same culture, and it made talking to him much easier than slogging through a conversation with others on base. And as things were going right now, easier than talking to anyone else in the _Ghost_ crew.

She sat across the room from Rau, on a slab that could double as a second bunk if he had a cellmate. His guarded expression took in everything about her.

“I may be your prisoner, but I still have some semblance of decorum and that means not talking to the likes of you.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. She was running out of fingers to count how many times she’d already stopped by to talk to him, and each time, though he resisted her conversation at first, they’d had several meaningful discussions.

“You’re gonna have to get over that, Rau. We come from different clans, sure, but we’re the only Mandos within lightyears of this place. Your only sticking point is that you hate my clan for things that happened when I was a baby. Yeah, real sorry I couldn’t step in as a one-year-old and stop my people from usurping the throne.”

“It’s not some faux pas that happened—if Death Watch hadn’t taken the throne from Clan Kryze, we could’ve stood a fighting chance against the Empire when it came.”

“You would’ve gone down in a hail of fire on a suicide mission; the Empire would’ve made sure of it,” Sabine scoffed. “When I went through the Academy, they still flouted how hard they slammed Mandalore. They’re the real enemy here, Rau.”

“And here you are, trying to convert me to the rebellion again.”

“Because you can’t keep living in the past! Clan rivalries and honor-bound revenge killing mean nothing when the Empire is more dangerous! It just ensures that we pick each other apart until there’s no one left to contest Imperial rule.”

“If the threat of the Empire hasn’t united our people yet, what will? You?”

Sabine scoffed at a conclusion more bent on derailing her point than encouraging it.

“The rest of my team may not be Mandalorian, but they’re good people. I want the Empire off of Mandalore more than anyone else, I guarantee it, and if any outsiders can help our planet, it’s them and this rebellion.”

Rau folded his arms across his chest. “Don’t tell me it’s because they have a Jedi.”

“No!” Her immediate reaction echoed in the confines of the cell. Sabine was nearing a dozen times that she had visited Rau, and in all those instances, not once had his goading earned a rise out of her. But the mission to Reklam yesterday catapulted back to mind, how Ezra had ignored all orders and cobbled together an infiltration plan. How he’d thrown out any opinions voiced by Sabine and Zeb, and even a war veteran like Rex. His foolishness and arrogance hadn’t gotten him killed only because he had the Force—and somehow that felt like a reward for his undisciplined behavior. Meaning _she_ could never pull off antics like that and get away with it.

Sabine took a deep breath and let her anger hiss out, wiping Reklam from her mind. After all, this wasn’t about Ezra. “No, what we need are numbers. If your Protectors joined in and helped the rebellion’s efforts, we could take the Empire by surprise.”

“Useless idealism.”

“I guess it’s a trait I picked up here. Because if you don’t have hope in something, you’ll never be convicted enough to work toward achieving it.”

-0-

More and more tasks fell on the rebellion’s plate, while failing to drop a proportional amount of new recruits with them. With supply runs, recon missions, weekly training, and taskings to gather more necessities for their own inventory, Hera hadn’t _stopped_ feeling like she was being pulled simultaneously in every direction in… awhile. Hera could always delineate tasks to her crew, but too many delineations and it would look like she was shirking responsibility. No, it was better to keep a running list of everything in her head.

Luckily for her, Chopper hadn’t stopped reminding her for the past five days of this morning’s block of pilot training, and even now occupied the _Ghost_ ’s cockpit in anticipation as Hera set out down the boarding ramp looking for another crew member.

With Sabine already on the orbiting corvette, and Ezra and Kanan absent all morning—and Hera could only hope they were somewhere training together, as neither had talked to her since they returned from Reklam last night—that left…

Zeb’s purple fur stood out against the bleached Atollon landscape as he hunkered at the far edge of the landing zone, pulling out one of the beacons that made up the protective perimeter fence and swapping it with a new one.

“Hey,” she said, approaching. “What’re you up to?”

“This one was missing its signal relay rod. Better to just replace the whole thing.”

“Well, Phoenix Squad is running maneuvers in ten. I need a gunner.”

Zeb checked the sensors of the new beacon he’d just planted. “And Ezra’s doing what, exactly?”

Hera wished that wasn’t such a pertinent question. “I’m not asking Ezra, I’m asking you, Zeb.”

“Yeah, all right,” he huffed, an edge straining his voice. “Let me get this turned in to the mechanics.”

“I really appreciate this,” Hera said. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, Hera had leaned on Kanan, relied on him, to keep from buckling under all her increasing responsibilities as an officer in the rebellion. When he withdrew after Malachor, suddenly and entirely, Hera had switched her reliance onto Zeb before she crashed without the support of someone else shouldering the weight of leadership decisions. She’d shifted her dependence without consciously realizing she’d done it, just all of a sudden one day she expected Zeb to have more of a voice among her crew, to back her up the way Kanan had.

At first, Zeb had risen to the challenge as if the attention and the upgraded importance were badges of honor. But lately that same attention provoked gruff responses and a borderline petulant demeanor. When she wondered if she was leaning too much—usually prompted by Zeb bristling—she made sure to remind Zeb of how helpful he was to her.

Zeb tossed the old beacon over his shoulder and lugged it toward base. His absence revealed a stab of green behind him—Kanan was approaching from well outside the perimeter, all by himself.

“What are you doing out there?!” Hera cried. He had often walked outside the base even after his injury, to sit and meditate within a reasonable distance of the fence, but he certainly wasn’t there a moment ago; he’d come from much further away. And the disturbing pallor of kryknas peeked just over the hill Kanan had come from. How had he gotten past them?

“I was… learning,” he said at last.

Hera only breathed a sigh of relief once he stepped past the safety of the sensors; any signs of kryknas receded then, as if knowing he was out of their reach now. “Did you at least take Ezra with you? Where is he?”

“I haven’t—I don’t know,” Kanan said.

Hera’s shoulders slumped at the response that had grown all too common among her crew. Nobody was keeping track of what others were doing anymore, too focused as they were on their own individual goals.

“You’re his teacher, Kanan,” Hera reminded him, walking that well-traveled tightrope between treating him like an adult and explaining things to a child. “I have _tried_ to fill in for you since… everything happened, but Ezra doesn’t respond to me the same way he does you. And lately, he hasn’t been responding the same at all. I know you’re going through something unimaginable right now, but could you talk to him, please?”

She had given Kanan space after Malachor, time to heal and to adjust to his new reality, expecting him to come back when he was ready. But weeks compounded into months and the months dragged on without any hint of a return. And while Hera gave Kanan room, Ezra slipped out of her grasp without her noticing—until it was too late and he was almost a different person. And Hera didn’t know how to correct any of it. She didn’t even know where to start.

“Okay,” Kanan acquiesced as Zeb returned. “I’ll look for him.”

“I don’t want to rush you,” Hera said carefully, “but we’re still here whenever you’re ready to come back to us. How are you doing?”

“Better, now that I’ve put some things into perspective,” Kanan said after an equal amount of thought. “And yeah, I think I’m ready to be back on the team again.” Zeb clapped him on the back with a purple paw.

Just the promise of _one_ piece of life returning to normal was enough to boost Hera all the way back to the _Ghost,_ and she took her place in the cockpit with the largest smile she’d worn in… as long as she could remember. It was noticeable enough that even Chopper asked her about it.

“It’s nothing,” she told him with a wave of her hand. “Today’s just a good day.”

-0-

Ezra sat cross-legged in the shade of the coral formation, on a leaf well above Chopper Base. His breath reduced to a steady rhythm, he let his focus pulse further with every exhale, searching. Seeking that red presence which had grown into a comrade of sorts ever since Malachor. He missed its voice. Missed the knowledge it revealed, that was easy to grasp and to use. Missed—

Instead of the holocron, a brightness approached, like a steady blip on the radar. Kanan. The closer Kanan got, the brighter his presence in the Force grew until he blanketed Ezra’s senses in a white haze, and with a groan Ezra gave up on his search.

Of course Kanan would choose now of all times to seek Ezra out. Just like the first time Kanan had come to talk to Ezra in months, before his mission to Reklam, was when Kanan had discovered the Sith holocron to begin with and taken it away.

Ezra rubbed his eyes as he came back to himself.

“Clearing your head?” Kanan asked, walking up behind him.

He kind of wanted to ask Kanan how he’d even climbed up here; he kind of didn’t want to say anything at all.

“Something like that.”

Ezra could count the number of interactions they’d had since Malachor on one hand, and not one of them led to anything resembling their relationship before that fateful trip. So when Kanan knelt beside him, Ezra turned stiff, steadfastly watching the landscape, waiting for Kanan to explain what he wanted.

The silence dragged on.

Finally, Kanan took a bracing breath. “I know I haven’t been around lately; I’ve taken a lot of time to do some searching and figure things out for myself, but I may have taken too long.”

Part of Ezra wanted to give in to irritation and agree out loud. All the missions that Kanan hadn’t deemed himself ready for cycled through Ezra’s head, the fuel pickups and supply drops and quick response tasks that fell to the rest of them instead. But with a labored breath, Ezra let that reactionary feeling pass.

“I think it’s time I came back,” Kanan continued, “and fill the capacity I left.”

Ezra waited for more—for Kanan to acknowledge that everyone had been hurt after Malachor yet didn’t withdraw from their duties or the rest of the crew. To acknowledge that no one else even had the luxury to do that, and even while Kanan didn’t entirely have that luxury either, he took it, making everyone else pick up the slack in the wake of his absence.

But Kanan was silent, and in fact he was now waiting for Ezra to say something.

“Will you be able to do much without… y’know?” Ezra blurted. Sabine and Rex gave Kanan’s mask jaig eyes, and with the way Kanan walked unassisted it was easy to forget most of the time that he was even blind. It was easy to forget a lot of things about Kanan when he was hardly around.

“Held my own back on Reklam Station, didn’t I?”

Despite Kanan’s sideways smile, guilt at a failed mission stabbed Ezra’s chest all over again, leaving him with a wince. “I guess so. Thanks, by the way. For saving me.” He hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Kanan yesterday. A hand fell on Ezra’s shoulder.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

This was the kind of conversation Ezra had been waiting for for the past few months, yet somehow it rang hollow. There was something lacking, something Ezra couldn’t put his finger on, but it was a feeling that they’d had before Malachor, long since replaced by an emptiness. A deep void.

Ezra hugged his knees to his chest, the search for the Sith holocron forgotten.

-0-

Two down, three to go.

The Y-wings sitting on the landing zone all required refitted hyperdrives before they could be transported to General Dodanna, and despite the mechanics offering to help, Hera decided to complete the installations herself. The necessary motivator components were left next to each ship for her, as she was the only one on the pad that night… aside from Chopper, who serenaded her by blasting some of her favorite songs.

It was a calming change of pace to work with her hands. Something about figuring out the logical solutions to mechanical problems had always soothed her when everything else in life reeled in a tailspin. Machines could be fixed, parts could be replaced. If only people’s problems could be so easily deduced.

Standing on an access ladder at the rear of the third Y-wing, Hera’s lekku swayed in time to the music Chopper pumped out of his speakers. She swung the cover panel up, exposing the obstructing interior heat shield that would have to be removed before she could reach the empty hyperdrive frame. After two hyperdrive installations, Hera had the shield removal process down to mere minutes.

A scuff of boots caught her attention, and Hera peered over the Y-wing to see a touch of purple hair bobbing past.

“Hey, Sabine!” Hera called. It took long enough for Sabine to circle to the rear of the ship that Hera wondered if the girl had slipped away. But she appeared, and Chopper switched to a Mandalorian-inspired dirge. Hera hushed him completely.

“You need something?” asked Sabine.

With the hectic rebellion tempo and the mundane tasks piling up—maintenance, supply runs, fuel acquisition—Hera more often stopped her crew to throw out another set of orders than to just talk. She hadn’t sat down with anyone to actually catch up in… a long time.

Hera flashed a smile. “It’s been quite a week, huh? How goes your meetings with Fenn Rau?” Hera never directed Sabine to attempt to befriend him, but she certainly wasn’t going to hamper the girl’s initiative. Rau would be a much stronger ally if he were willing rather than compulsed.

“He’s pretty stubborn, but he’s Mando, so,” she said, her conclusion trailing off in a shrug. “I’d be shocked if he gave in already. But I’m wearing him down.”

“Were you up there talking to him all day?”

“An hour or so. Then the corvette had other tasks I helped with. Nothing big.”

Standing there in her repainted armor, it was impossible for Hera not to compare her with the girl she’d picked up years ago, ferocious and as explosive as her preferred method of attack. Sabine had come so far and grown into an accomplished young woman.

“Nice hair, by the way,” Hera said, pointing her spanner at the white-to-purple gradient.

“It’s been like this for a couple of weeks,” Sabine said. Still, a smile cracked on her face, the first one Hera had seen that day. “But thanks. You’re the only person to mention it.” She brushed a lock of hair behind an ear and glanced elsewhere, as if looking for an exit.

Hera dropped the spanner and descended the ladder, pulling off her grease-splattered gloves. “Is everything all right, Sabine? You’ve been distant lately… more than usual.”

Sabine sighed… or scoffed. Anymore they were one and the same. “How do you want me to act when you don’t treat me like a responsible member of the team? Just happy to be here?”

Hera had hoped for bluntness, but actually getting it was like a punch to the gut. “Where did that come from?”

“Zeb and I have been with you years longer than Ezra, yet he gets an officer’s rank in the rebellion and leads a mission when he hadn’t led anything off of Lothal before! Do you need more time for Zeb and me to prove ourselves? Would it help if we had lightsabers, too?” The raw emotion flashing in Sabine’s eyes twisted Hera’s stomach. If her crew hadn’t spent so much time apart, maybe she could’ve caught the warning signs of resentment before this.

“Look, he was promoted to fill a necessary slot for your mission. The mission itself was supposed to be routine recon, until...”

“Until the rank went to his head,” Sabine snorted, folding her arms across her chest.

“Ezra was understood to have the most intel of Recklam, which edged him into the leadership position,” Hera said. “We know how much of an asset you are, Sabine, and you weren’t overlooked. No one thinks you couldn’t bring the same to the table, and when it comes to your area of expertise, we depend entirely on you. I’m really proud of your determination to talk Rau into joining us, you know that, don’t you?”

“Are we done here?” Sabine asked.

Hera wanted to scream, to grab Sabine and shake her, to make everyone go back to the way they used to be. Instead, she just hugged her own arms. “Yeah, we’re done.” Sabine walked away without another word, leaving Hera and Chopper alone among the ships again.

Pinpointing any one thing as the inciting event that triggered her crew’s slow drift apart would be futile, Hera knew, but she couldn’t help noticing how everything strained after Malachor. Not only was Kanan physically injured, but the rest of the crew—especially Sabine and Ezra—lost their spark.

As if the shock of mortality had finally sunk in.

They had all been beaten and bruised, sure, but that was something they could recover from. Malachor was a mission that Ahsoka hadn’t survived and had irreversibly injured Kanan; if Jedi could be bested, then the rest of them were even more susceptible.

Hera chewed her lip, wondering if the aftershocks that leeched her team of their cohesion were partially her fault. Just like the stories from her wartorn childhood, she’d been guilty of perpetuating the idea that nothing could go wrong if they had the Jedi, and therefore the Force, on their side. Stories made them out to be invincible. Which was exactly what the displaced people of her childhood and her current rebellion needed—an empowering symbol to rally around.

But even a beacon of hope could be snuffed out.

Chopper asked if she was all right as Hera forced her gloves back on.

Nothing some maintenance couldn’t distract her from. “Still got my angry music somewhere in there?”

Chopper laughed, and a second later blared percussion-heavy noise loud enough to make the Y-wing vibrate, along with Hera’s lekku. She grabbed her spanner and climbed the thrumming ladder to finish her work, serenaded by the music that screamed her innermost emotions.

-0-

In another part of the galaxy, the _ISD Chimaera_ hovered over Lothal City, its illuminated underhull contrasting with the night sky as a Lambda-class shuttle departed its hangar. It brought Grand Admiral Thrawn to the Imperial Complex where he found a familiar face waiting for him in the landing bay. Behind her, rows of troopers and officers stood forming a path toward the turbolifts along the back wall.

“Governor Pryce,” Thrawn greeted, descending the boarding ramp. “I did not require you to take time away from your duties to stand on formality.”

Pryce turned to walk alongside him, mimicking his posture of hands behind his back. “Nonsense! Your first time arriving on Lothal is a moment for ceremony, Grand Admiral,” she said. They passed a battalion’s worth of Imperials lined up for just this occasion, with parked shuttles and walkers displayed in the hangar behind them. “This is a momentous occasion, after all. It’s the start of Lothal finally putting itself on the map next to planets like Corellia and Centares.”

There was a scheming glint to her eyes, much easier to detect as they entered the closeness of the nearest turbolift. This was very much the Pryce that Thrawn remembered, but here, on her own planet, there was an edge of aggression and assurity which power bestowed, and which she wore proudly as the highest ranking politician in the local hierarchy.

Her voice dropped as the lift accelerated upward. “I wasn’t going to leave it to a holocall—secure or not—to inform you we are already enacting your plan in the factory. We’re converting a level previously dedicated to walker production into a TIE facility. It’ll be fully operational within two weeks.”

“So long?” Thrawn said, eyebrows rising. Pryce had openly bragged in Coruscanti company about the output of her mines and factory for the Empire. Thrawn suspected this was over-exaggeration, but he’d hoped there was still more than a little truth to her words.

“Grand Admiral,” she cried, an incredulous lilt to her voice, “the security measurements you require around this whole endeavor leads to a reduced workforce. Of course it’ll take longer than otherwise!”

He glanced her way, taking in the heat pattern on her face for any trace of deception. There was none; she stood confidently in the lift. But she was also admirably talented at lying. The doors opened and the two continued down well-lit corridors.

“I agree with your desire for security, of course,” she added. “But the tradeoff of a secure production is efficiency. It’ll be worth the wait; I’m sure you know these ships are exactly what the Empire needs right now!”

And while Thrawn had never disclosed it to Governor Pryce, the TIE Defender project would be a viable alternative to the much larger battle station the Empire was currently wasting credits and resources on.

The Governor left Thrawn at his office in time to receive a requested local item: a portion of a graffitied barrier wall marked with the rebel starbird. A squad of stormtroopers finagled the heavy piece into the far back corner of the office.

“Next to the desk,” Thrawn said, picking a position from which to watch them, “at a forty degree angle, please.”

As the troopers pushed, a blond man with the most unsightly facial hair Thrawn had ever seen entered. It wasn’t something Thrawn could take offense with when Agent Kallus wasn’t in the Imperial Navy at all but rather under the rules, and therefore the grooming standards, of the Imperial Security Bureau. They hadn’t said two words to each other beyond their initial introduction days ago by Governor Pryce.

The hair somewhat factored into the aversion on Thrawn’s part.

“Grand Admiral,” Kallus greeted, if hesitantly. He offered a datacard to the Chiss. “Here are all the accumulated reports of rebel activity in the Lothal system over the past five years.”

“Thank you, Agent. Your speed at compiling this is appreciated.” Thrawn exchanged the card for one already in his pocket, which he handed to Kallus. “I have already chosen a means by which to locate the rebels. It involves the ISB, and I would appreciate you passing that along to Colonel Yularen for approval.”

“Understood. You know, I read about the successful outcome at Batonn, Grand Admiral,” Kallus continued, earning a red side eye. “It’s fascinating to read your processes, though I don’t see the need to waste a resource such as yourself on this sector when the prominent rebel threat has left of their own volition.”

“Shall I take that as your professional analysis of the situation?” Thrawn asked, turning to Kallus. He noted Agent Kallus’ pause, the exact same momentary stall that Thrawn’s red eyes usually caused among humans who had just met him. Though, after his most recent promotion, it could just as easily have been his gold shoulder boards.

“Well, their Jedi leadership was dealt with months ago by Darth Vader himself, and the remaining rebel activity in the capital is random; uncoordinated. Clearly lacking the cohesiveness of the Phoenix cell.”

“I was not called in to hunt a single cell, Agent,” Thrawn said, casting his attention back to the barrier wall that the stormtroopers finally eased into place. “I intend to snuff out their entire network. And where better to start than the place I can learn most about them?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on, updates should be every two weeks~


	3. Chapter 2

The mottled blue of hyperspace danced across the bridge of the cruiser-carrier _Phoenix Nest,_ nearly washing out the lifesize figure of General Dodanna. There was no holotable to be seen, just a handful of projectors stationed around the bridge that wove together a full hologram of Dodanna to stand on the same durasteel plating as Commander Sato and Hera.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you in person,” the general told them, “but thank you, Phoenix Squadron, for transporting the Y-wings to us. They’ll be a great help.”

The thanks fell a bit flat when Phoenix Squadron had been required to hand over their Y-wings to the larger rebellion cell, and Hera didn’t force her smile to stay in place. The Y-wings were supposed to be Phoenix’s, but halfway through Ezra’s mission to Reklam, word came from Yavin that Dodanna’s Massassi Group needed them more, and considering where they fell in the hierarchy, it carried the weight of an order.

“We regret we couldn’t supply you with more,” Sato said.

A cringe snaked down Hera’s spine; they’d barely made it away from the Empire with the ones they _did_ manage to save—it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“Oh, believe me, Commander, even five ships bolsters our fleet!” Dodanna replied, a genuine smile breaking through his white facial hair.

“When can we look forward to the attack on the Lothal factory, then?” Hera asked.

Dodanna’s sobering expression told her everything. “We’re not ready to take on an Imperial blockade,” he admitted. “I’ve heard how easily you can slip by them on your own, Captain Syndulla, but if we arrive in force, we need to be prepared for the battle. Right now, these ships and personnel are needed elsewhere. We can’t afford to lose them.”

“But sir, if we take that factory down, we’ll be saving the rebellion from future attacks—”

“We simply can’t go after every factory out there,” sighed Dodanna.

As a leader herself, Hera understood that perfectly. But as someone who had been entrenched on Lothal, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was different about this factory. Part of it was the echoing warning Maketh Tua had given them over a year ago, that there was a reason for the Empire focusing on Lothal—but she had absolutely no evidence to substantiate that. All she could do was defer to the chain of command, and feel like she was letting Ezra down in the process.

“In the meantime, we will continue building our arsenal for future joint operations,” decided Sato.

Dodanna nodded along. “Good. Over the better part of a year, we’ve been following leads of something big the Empire is working on. The more we uncover on that front, the more I expect we’ll call on our sister cells to investigate this with us.”

“How big?” Hera asked, eyes narrowing.

“Big enough that finding scraps of information at a time doesn’t get us much closer to a comprehensive picture,” said Dodanna.

Hera’s thoughtful gaze slid to Sato. “At this point, I don’t know how much bigger any of the Empire’s goals can get. Although we have someone in our custody who might know.”

Commander Sato nodded. “If that’s your way of asking permission to speak with Commander Titus—granted.”

Bright blue faded to the star-speckled darkness of realspace. An alarmed cry from the pilot drew Hera’s attention and her eyes shot wide. A formation of three Star Destroyers dominated the viewport.

“General, we’ll call you back!” Hera cried. A glimmering wave, like a space mirage, was all that could be seen of the approaching TIE fighters against the backdrop of space.

“Send out pilots to intercept!” Sato ordered. Hera’s lekku flung wide as she pivoted and shot from the bridge, down the corridor towards the hangar where the _Ghost_ sat.

“Chopper!” she called into her wrist communicator. “Start the pre-flight sequence! I’m on my way!”

The _Ghost_ was the last ship to leave the hangar, barreling towards the tumbling and repelling haze of TIEs, A-wings, and laser fire.

“All fighters, stay out of range of the Star Destroyers!” Hera barked over the comms. In the wake of her even voice cutting through the chatter, the frequency again grew thick with voices.

“Phoenix Two, watch—you’ve got two on your tail!” “I’m hit!” “I can’t shake ‘em!” “Hang on, Phoenix Four!”

“Chop, get on the guns!” Hera ordered, gloves creaking around the steering controls. She chased any TIE that veered from the dogfight toward _Phoenix Nest._ Her enemies exploded in short-lived bursts of fuel as Hera looped back in effortless arcs to again pinpoint another target.

“Phoenix leader, they’re hot on my tail!” one pilot called out. Hera banked left.

“Hang in there!” Hera shouted. “We just have to hold them off until _Phoenix Nest_ is away.” Shooting the outermost TIE fighters broke the _Ghost_ into the interior of the swarm. Hera found three ships in pursuit of Phoenix Six.

“Phoenix Six, I need you to swerve ninety degrees on my mark,” Hera said. “Now!” The pilot obeyed and the TIEs lined up perfectly as they attempted to chase. Two more explosions, and two more tallies to add to the _Ghost_ ’s count. A quick loop brought Hera behind the last TIE, and she racked up a third explosion.

“ _Phoenix Nest_ is away,” reported one of the pilots.

“All pilots, form up on me. Evasive pattern cresh,” Hera ordered. An annoying warning blared in the cockpit—she’d been locked onto by some enemy. But with a sharp twist to the side, the noise stopped. Hera fired on whatever TIE flew in front of her, clearing a way through the swarm.

“They’re on me, I can’t get away!” “Hold tight, Phoenix Four, I—” A diluted crash cut short was what Hera knew was a pilot meeting a fiery death. Free of the TIEs, she banked once more to scan the scene behind her. Only two A-wings had made it out with her; four more still dodged enemy fire within the swarm.

“Phoenix Two and Six, go ahead and jump; I’ve got the others,” Hera told the pilots. She shot her way back inside the fray, chasing the TIEs that her pilots couldn’t shake. A bright light lit up the side of her viewport and one A-wing dissolved in a burst of fuel.

“That came from the Destroyer!” shrieked a pilot.

“Evasive pattern cresh!” Hera ordered again, as clearly they hadn’t heard it the first time. The A-wings all looped, firing where they could, but otherwise shooting for any opening in the circling enemy.

“Phoenix Leader! I’ve got two on my tail!” came a strained voice.

“Don’t worry, Phoenix Five.” Hera saw the ship not too far in front of her and she targeted one TIE easily—it was just within her range.

A shudder rocked the _Ghost_ and alarms wailed; she’d been hit. Lights indicated the main engine was failing, but the secondary engine compensated—barely.

She still chased the second TIE, not closing the distance as quickly anymore. It shot at the A-wing continuously. So far the pilot had dodged everything with rolls Hera had taught her, she just had to keep it up.

“Once you’re all clear, jump!” Hera ordered. Her thumbs were on the trigger buttons, just waiting for the second TIE to slip into range. A second too soon, a different TIE veered from the side, intercepting the A-wing and shooting it into a burst of debris. Hera screamed as she opened fire on the TIE she’d been chasing, nicking the wing and sending it spinning into another enemy fighter. The two remaining A-wings shot free of the enemy and jumped. With the Destroyers closing in, Hera had nothing else to do but dart out of the fray and shoot into the safety of hyperspace herself.

The softness of hyperspace was a stark difference, and Hera took her time untangling herself from the steering column. She waited for her buzzing nerves to calm before patching in a transmission to _Phoenix Nest._

A small figure of Commander Sato appeared from Chopper’s projector. “Report, Captain.”

“There were too many TIEs; we lost half our pilots. Did the Protectors warn us about Imperial patrols just outside their hyperspace lane?”

“No,” Sato said, his face grave. “But it sounds like I should look into this.”

“I think it's time to ask Fenn Rau, sir, when we’re back on base.”

-0-

Out here in Atollon’s sun-bleached expanse, the distant coral formation under which Chopper Base hid stood nearly as tall as Kanan.

His blue lightsaber hummed in slow arcs as Kanan twisted it from hand to hand while Ezra waited. Kanan had been the one to suggest a sparring match like they used to do, to gauge where they were at. Really, he had worded it in a way that sounded like _Ezra_ was the one being assessed, but at least Ezra had kept up with lightsaber training. To his knowledge, Kanan shirked every Jedi technique except meditation since…

Ezra spun his own lightsaber in his hand, a focusing movement, if an impatient one.

Kanan finally turned in his direction, sinking into his prefered stance. “You ready?”

Ezra lunged forward, green lightsaber humming. It cracked and sizzled against Kanan’s as the man parried the blow. Ezra’s strikes increased in intensity; more than gauging Kanan’s abilities, Ezra wanted to test out his new style on an opponent after months of training alone. The pull of their lightsabers connecting was a feeling Ezra had almost forgotten.

Kanan’s movements shifted to pure defense—blocking and dodging and deflecting. Ezra’s strikes had little in the way of form or flow. He circled Kanan. He attacked from every direction, hacking, slashing, fighting in the moment. Lacking a solid plan.

Ezra caught the inside of Kanan’s lightsaber and forced it wide, opening the Jedi right up for any follow up attack. But Ezra paused with his blade pointed at Kanan’s neck. They stood like this for a silent moment—a stunned moment, in Kanan’s case.

Green was the last lightsaber to disengage.

Kanan clawed for breath, leaning on his knees. “Who taught you form seven?!”

“I thought it was Juyo,” Ezra said with a shrug. That’s what Maul had called it, anyway, when he complained that Ezra had been mostly trained in Soresu.

Kanan straightened, his jaw slack, and Ezra could just feel the dangerous slant of his hidden eyebrows.

“Juyo is only learned by the Sith. What did that holocron teach you?” he demanded, the evenness of his speech warning the impending danger for answering poorly.

Ezra heard his restraint audibly snap.

“More than you did, since you wanted nothing to do with me after Malachor!” he shouted. “Kanan, I’m sorry you lost your sight, you know I’m sorry! But it was _your_ choice to avoid all of us—don’t get mad that we started moving on without you!” Ezra should’ve reigned it in there, but the dam had already broken and there was no stopping the outpouring. “You picked me up years ago to train me, so if you now choose that you’re not going to help, I won’t just sit here and wait for you to change your mind again! I’m taking my training into my own hands if you refuse to step up. And you did. You refused for the past six months. I _had_ to rely on other sources, and they ended up improving my abilities faster than you or your holocron ever did!”

The first part had been freeing, laying bare the guilt he’d shouldered for far too long. The rest, shades of blame tumbling out haphazardly, left Ezra shaking as he worked himself deeper into the heat of his crackling emotions. The way Kanan’s jaw set, Ezra expected him to leave, to avoid speaking to him for days. Weeks. But the Jedi remained.

“I don’t blame you for what happened to me,” Kanan ground out. “I never did. I withdrew from everybody so I could come to terms with my new reality. It’s… it’s a change, Ezra. And I never wanted to put your training on hold, but I also expected you to stick to what _I_ taught you.”

On more than one occasion when grappling with the morality of opening the Sith holocron, Ezra found justification in remembering their sparring matches before Malachor. He and Kanan were coming to stalemates more often than not—a kid with a couple years of training under his belt verses a Temple-raised Jedi Knight. Verses a glowing red holocron whispering the long-forgotten secrets to power and victory.

“I’d already caught up to what you could teach me,” Ezra reminded him. And the way Kanan’s face fell, it was clear he remembered, too. “I need more challenging training if I’m ever going to improve beyond a padawan. I can’t stick to the basics forever.”

“And you _will_ make it past a padawan. I’m not out of material yet,” Kanan promised. He shifted his stance, lightsaber in hand again. “This time, stick to form three.”

A whine sounded from somewhere in the bright sky before a shadow passed over them. The _Ghost_ descended towards Chopper Base, trailing smoke from one of its engines.

“Everyone to the war room!” Hera ordered over their wristcoms. “Sabine, bring Rau.”

-0-

The _Ghost_ still had engines enough to break through the atmosphere of the planet once more. Hera docked against Atollon’s orbiting corvette, and everyone she stopped to pick up planetside funneled into the war room ahead of her. She claimed a spot between Commander Sato and Captain Rex, standing opposite the holoterminal from Sabine and Rau. Rau stood cuffed, looking like just being there was a severe inconvenience. The rest of the Ghost crew filled in empty spaces between the leadership and the prisoner.

“What’s the big problem?” Rex asked.

“Our ships ran into an Imperial patrol right as we exited the Protector’s hyperspace lane,” Hera announced to the room. “We lost more pilots than we could afford to.”

“We didn’t receive any warning that Imperials were in the area,” added Sato. Everyone around the holoterminal quietly looked to Rau with differing degrees of severity.

“If you’re insinuating that my men are trying to deceive you, come out and say it,” Rau said, his expression stony. “They wouldn’t leave you to the Empire if they wanted you taken care of; they could handle that themselves.” Hera held his stare, heat flaring in her lekku at the unbidden memories of her first meeting with the Protectors.

Silence followed.

“Don’t antagonize them,” Sabine grumbled.

“I contacted Fulcrum to ask for any information on this matter,” Sato’s voice cut through the tension, “and this is the reply I received.” He engaged a series of buttons on the holoterminal and it brightened with the stationary Fulcrum symbol.

“The Empire would rather let Mandalorians handle their own problems, as long as they fall in line with the Emperor’s vision,” said a distorted voice, flickering in time with the visual transmission. “However, it’s become increasingly obvious that the rebellion is skirting Imperial patrols and waypoints, which leaves the Empire looking to the hyperspace lanes held by allies. Lanes they previously assumed were secure. Your friends may already be in danger.”

“We should warn them,” Ezra spoke up as the light died from the holoterminal.

“Not by transmission,” said Hera. “If the Empire really is looking into the Protectors, it’s safe to assume they’ll be monitoring anything in or out of Concord Dawn.”

“Let me go to them,” Rau demanded.

“I’ll go, too,” Sabine said before anyone at the table could shoot down Rau’s request. She stood with a defiant lift to her chin, looking from Hera to Sato as if daring them to deny her.

“Not by yourself,” Hera said.

“I could go. I have a history with the Protectors,” said the last person Hera had hoped would volunteer. Kanan, with his head tilted in her direction, appeared to be looking right at her with his Jaig eye marking. Outside of the Reklam mission where he hadn’t left the ship, Hera had no way of judging what Kanan was capable of. And she wasn’t willing to risk it.

“I need you for something else,” Hera said in a tone that her crew knew by now not to question.

“Then I’m in,” Ezra volunteered.

She had hoped Zeb or even Rex would speak up first, but neither looked like they were going to chip in at all. And she had no real reason to turn Ezra down.

“Fine, but it’s Sabine’s mission.” Hera hated acknowledging the fact that she braced herself for a retort or an outburst from Ezra; she hated even more that surprise and relief washed over her in equal parts when no protest came.

“Take all the precaution you can. If the Protectors are already compromised, get yourselves out of there,” Sato said. “Go get ready.”

Sabine, Ezra and Rau left the war room.

“We’ve amassed all the spare supplies we can to contribute our share to the Teralov relief mission,” Rex announced to those remaining, “Once it has a look-over, it’ll be on its way to Yavin to join the rest of the cargo.”

It was one of the joint missions that made Hera feel good about belonging to the rebellion. Teralov, a planet ravaged for resources and left behind by the Empire, was in desperate need of food, and Yavin sent out a call to collect whatever supplies they could for aid. Numerous cells responded, and Teralov would soon be supplied with their charity.

Rex’s gaze fell on Hera, as she was usually the one to clear supply departures, and her gaze just as easily slid to Zeb.

“Check that they packed everything according to the manifest,” she delineated. Pleasantly, there was no bristling or grumbling on Zeb’s part, just a noise of acknowledgement before he moved out.

The rest around the table dispersed. Kanan felt his way along the holoterminal as he closed the distance between himself and Hera.

“Do you really have something for me, or did you just want me off that mission?”

The way his head inclined in her direction, it felt like Kanan could see right _through_ her. She squared her shoulders, doubling down on her decision.

“Sabine and Ezra can handle it. They’ve been shouldering a lot more responsibility lately…”

“Since I stepped back, is that what you were going to say?”

“No! But as things stand, I think Sabine would feel overshadowed if you tagged along. She needs to be in charge of this one, to see that we trust her as much as Ezra.”

“Fine, but we’re still sending two kids into a Mandalorian camp _with_ their leader. You have to know Rau’s not coming back a prisoner again,” argued Kanan.

Yes, that thought had been lurking in the back of her mind.

Chopper rolled into their conversation then to tug on Hera’s flight pants and volunteer himself for Sabine’s mission—mostly because it was bound to be interesting, but also to say goodbye to his favorite prisoner.

Hera sighed. “I guess?” Chopper rolled away and Hera folded her arms across her chest. “It should probably worry me the types of people he befriends.”

-0-

To defeat an enemy, you must know them. Not simply their battle tactics, but their history, philosophy, art.

The graffitied barrier wall in Thrawn’s office now paled in comparison to all the colorful holographic files ringing the room, taken from the Spectre’s dossier. Chronological pictures hung in the air of the known crew, of other paint-tagged locations, of the broken remains of their Imperial targets once they completed a successful hit and run.

For gleaning most of his insight from planetary artwork, Thrawn found this an enticing new challenge—only one among the _Ghost_ crew was a Lothal native; the others, coming from all across the galaxy, brought with them their own cultural identities and internalizations and quirks that Thrawn would have to familiarize himself with. Nothing in the files explained why the crew decided to operate on Lothal to begin with, but Imperial reports immortalized the increasing trail of damage left in the the _Ghost_ crew’s wake.

Thrawn circled his office slowly, studying each picture in turn. The shift over the years was obvious; compared to the Spectres originally avoiding casualties, their recent employment of fatal violence in their attacks made them look like a different group entirely. A sign of desperation, or of confidence? Or perhaps of changing values?

He paused on one picture of the young Jedi—the Lothal native—wearing an Imperial cadet uniform. Agent Kallus had said the Jedi “were taken care of” by Darth Vader, and that sentiment was shared by ranks all the way up to Moff Tarkin, yet recent reports placed the boy at the destruction of Reklam Station. As Thrawn wondered where the misinformation could’ve started—with the ISB or with Vader himself—the door to his office slid open for Governor Pryce.

“Admiral, I read the report you intended for the ISB, requesting a legion of Imperial probes to search for the rebel base,” she said, her voice clipped; sharp. “I declined it.”

Interesting that his report found its way from Kallus’ possession into Pryce’s. “May I ask why?”

She entered the ring of holograms and folded her arms across her chest. “Because I wanted to see if you had any other plans that didn’t require _twenty million_ credits!”

“I requested the most direct option. What it costs financially it will make up for in expediency, I can assure you. Predicting where the rebels will strike next will not necessarily lead us back to their base.” Some predictions were just elementary, like when known planets sympathetic to the rebellion faced food shortages and suddenly sent out several encrypted transmissions in too many directions to trace. Recently the Outer Rim planet Teralov had done just that, and Thrawn dispatched a command cruiser to monitor that system. But the rebellion grew larger all the time, and Thrawn would soon not be able to logically connect the right dots when the clues grew too numerous to weed out the irrelevant.

“Lothal doesn’t have the budget to afford this request! I already pulled in every favor I had just to get the military to land your TIE project here—the Corellian governor absolutely hates me now! More than before.” Heat flared on her face in patches of consternation. “I won’t be able to ask for anything for years!”

Thrawn arched a brow. “I fail to see how that impedes your duties.”

“Politics, Admiral. It’s all about favors—it’s how anything gets accomplished. If the local government you fall under does not have the budget to finance your request, your request won’t be granted. And as I am all out of favors, I can’t ask anyone else to finance your request, either.”

Even with the prestigious rank Thrawn had gained, he was still restrained by economics. He could not simply pay for an expenditure as a Grand Admiral when the Empire funneled all excess credits they had and some they didn’t into the Death Star project. The military did not own the specific probe droids Thrawn requested; the ISB did. And despite Thrawn’s beneficial friendship with the head of the ISB, Colonel Yularen, friendship couldn’t waive a price tag of millions of credits. Besides, Thrawn would not want his plans to come about in any underhanded way; shortchanging the Empire would only hurt them all in the long run.

Thrawn put one hand to his mouth, considering. “And how might you suggest I go about getting my request granted, Governor?”

All the irritation evaporated from her posture at that, and the patches of anger on her face dulled. Her comfort zone couldn’t be more obvious.

“Appeal to someone with clout. The representative of the Lothal System, perhaps? She never leaves Coruscant anymore but she’ll be at the Centares Gala. I believe that’s where you’re debuting the TIE Defender program to our associates?”

“That event is weeks away.”

The gala itself, this one specifically for the Imperials stationed in the Outer Rim, was another stuffy function the Empire loved to waste time and money on, but it did allow for Imperials across both the military and the political spheres to all come together and share their different projects based in the Outer Rim, to promote cooperation and strengthen the Imperial presence overall.

“It might seem far into the future, but in the meantime we have your deductive reasoning that doesn’t cost Lothal millions of credits,” said Pryce, smiling.

“Would it not be more appropriate for yourself to approach a representative, as you both operate in the political sector?”

“No, no. It’s _your_ proposal.”

“And you have already used all your favors?” asked Thrawn.

Pryce didn’t bother to respond, and Thrawn thought better of her for it. He proceeded to his desk, and with one press of a button the pictures from Phoenix’s dossier were replaced by historic art of various crudeness. Cave paintings, mostly, far less colorful than the rebel’s works of art.

“While you’re here, Governor, I’d like to ask you about these drawings. I found them when I was combing through Lothal’s distant history, but have uncovered no recent accounts of them.” He gestured to the representations of large four-legged animals circling smaller human-shaped figures. “What are they?”

“Loth-wolves?” she asked with the briefest laugh. “There aren’t any recent accounts because they’re extinct.”

“Interesting,” Thrawn said. “Most depictions of them are almost reverent.” The pictures displayed humanoid shapes either cowering from or bowing to the wolves.

“Of course the people feared them. This was back before powerful blasters—and you can see, once weaponry improved, no more Loth-wolves. Folklore says they were as tall as a house, but we’ve found no remains to corroborate this. Outside of a nursery rhyme or two, I can’t say we really acknowledge them anymore.”

The removal of an entire predator species should’ve had long-lasting, undeniable effects on the ecosystem and yet…

“Thank you for your clarification on this point, Governor. That is all.”

-0-

There was no time to mourn those lost to the Empire’s lasers, not even to pause to say a few words in remembrance. Hera sent half her remaining pilots out in search of new sources of fuel, and the others who were grounded while their A-wings were repaired were tasked with locating possible new ships. Hera still had to assess the extent of damage the _Ghost_ had received, but while she was docked with the corvette, she took this opportunity to follow through with her newest assignment from Sato.

Brom Titus shot Hera a penetrating glare when she entered his jail cell. Despite the squadron affording him a change of clothes, the Imperial stubbornly continued to wear his black uniform that displayed his commander rank, and sat on his bunk with all the graces of an angry toddler.

“Meal time already?” he asked, his condescending tone so default that it was probably issued to him when he joined the Empire.

“I’m here to talk, Titus,” Hera said. She sat on the bunk slab opposite him, taking a moment to really look at him. The same quirk to his mouth was cemented in place as it was for other Imperials she’d had face-to-face encounters with. Hera knew disgust for a non-human when she saw it, but luckily he otherwise kept his opinions to himself. His disheveled blond hair at least broke the illusion of a polished officer; even his uniform wasn’t latched to standard.

“From Admiral of an Interdictor to a commander of a junk station—that’s quite a demotion, don’t you think?”

Titus folded his arms across his chest and flashed a warning glower her way.

Hera sat there projecting confidence. “I can only imagine if the Empire gets you back after being captured by rebels, your occupational trajectory can only continue downward. Will you even be allowed to remain in the Navy after this? Just think of all the strides the Empire’s making that you won’t be a part of.”

“Three different people have already talked to me, you know. I’m waiting for your little friends to grow tired of getting nothing. Just execute me and get it over with,” he sniffed.

“That’s not how the rebellion operates.”

Titus barked with laughter. “That must have been some _other_ rebellion, then, that destroyed my Interdictor along with two light cruisers. The death toll was over three thousand. But of course, that’s not how you operate.”

Hera forced her expression to remain neutral in the uncomfortable silence that followed. Taking a threat like the Interdictor away from the Empire had been an uncontested win, but the staggering death toll—which they could never know specifically as the Empire didn’t advertise their defeats, especially involving secret projects, and could only rely on Sabine’s estimations—had never sat right with Hera. Soldiers in white helmets reminded her too much of the clones who had liberated Ryloth so many years ago. They weren’t clones, she knew, but all the same she couldn’t gloat at their deaths.

Three _thousand._ Almost the same as the population of her home province on Ryloth. To think of all those people, wiped out in one destructive cataclysm…

She steeled her expression in front of Titus, who was positively glaring daggers at her. “That’s an unfortunate loss of life—”

“That’s what you rebels are best at. Destruction and killing. Wreaking havoc and anarchy. Causing discomfort in the lives of those you swear you’re helping. Destroyed ships means heavier taxes, and longer hours in mines to extract the extra resources suddenly needed to replace something that took you minutes to destroy. And then you celebrate what you consider to be your victories, because you have nothing else to hold on to.”

“An easy judgment to make by someone who’s only benefited from the Empire,” Hera retorted.

“You know why aliens disproportionately join the rebellion, don’t you? It’s because your cognitive reasoning is nowhere as developed as a human’s. You just simply can’t think right, and thus you act out against the Empire that brought order to the galaxy.”

He blathered on with what he assured her was well-researched and sound science to back up his claims. Barely a minute into his monologue, Hera left his cell before she could sock him in the jaw.

Her wrist communicator beeped as she reached the _Ghost_ airlock.

“Manifest checks out; I cleared the ship for launch. Supplies’re on their way to Yavin,” Zeb reported. And it was the first good news she’d had all day.

-0-

The corvette loaded with relief supplies for Teralov needed to pass through the Protector’s hyperspace lane, and Sabine had no problem requesting they drop her group off along the way.

She and Ezra were on the bridge when the dull purple of Concord Dawn expanded across the entire viewport. The sight of half a planet’s hemisphere turned into its own asteroid field seemed to grab everyone’s attention, because the entire bridge crew paused at one point or another to stare at it. Ezra’s breath hitched next to her.

“Is that where we’re going?” he asked, pointing to the debris caught in the planet’s gravitational pull.

“We’re going to that moon over there,” said Sabine with a nod to a much smaller orb that remained fully intact.

“Did the Empire do that?”

“No,” Sabine huffed. “That’s what hundreds of years of war looks like. Not everything in the galaxy is the Empire’s fault; some things predate them.”

The man at the radar station scanned the vicinity and reported an all clear, and the corvette descended toward their destination.

“Speaking of things that predate the Empire, better to not mention anything about being a Jedi,” Sabine said as she made her way off the bridge.

Ezra followed. “Why not?”

“Just… don’t.”

The ship touched down and all four exited, Rau still cuffed in binders. When they were a good fifty meters away, the corvette took off again, this time to disappear into the hyperspace lanes.

Rau, lacking all armor, led the way towards the Protector’s campsite, with Sabine and Ezra falling in behind him. The trek was quiet, and Sabine didn’t mind that, but she also couldn’t help inspecting their surroundings for anything—ambush or otherwise.

A group of three Mandalorians crested the ridge in front of them, and at the sight of their leader, they lowered their blasters.

“What happened here?” Rau demanded.

The foremost Protector took in Rau’s escort and his binders. “More like what happened with you.”

“The rebellion’s been running into Imperials while trying to use these hyperspace lanes,” Ezra said. “Why haven’t you been alerting us?”

Sabine elbowed him, hissing, “Hey, my mission, remember?”

“The Empire’s been sniffing around,” the lead Protector said with a shrug. “Sent Mandalorians that call themselves Imperial commandos to look for you a few days ago, Rau, and when they didn’t find you they said they’d be back. They probably suspect the rebels have free reign here.” His tone slanted into condescension, and Sabine felt his judgmental gaze even through his dark T-visor.

“The Empire sent Mandalorians?” repeated Ezra.

“Many have already sided with the Empire, the cowards,” Rau said.

“If they suspect, they’re not gonna let that go, trust me,” Sabine said. “This is the Empire we’re talking about, they’re not exactly short on resources. You’re all in danger here. But our base hasn’t been discovered; you’d be safe there, and the rebellion is in need of pilots.”

“Uh, what?” croaked Ezra.

“You already tried this with me,” Rau said. “Don’t expect better luck with them.”

“Trade one overseer for another?” the lead Protector asked. “Or will we be kept as prisoners, too?”

“That depends on if we can trust you,” Ezra snipped.

Sabine elbowed him again, harder this time.

“We have incoming!” warned a new Protector as a group of five more joined those standing on the ridge. They pointed behind Sabine, where a shape could just be made out in the sky, stretching into individual flying Mandalorians.

“Speak of the quarry,” grumbled Rau. The sounds of blasters charging were especially sharp in Sabine’s helmet, and instinctively one hand closed around a hilt of her own blaster. With her free hand, she pushed Ezra into the middle of the group of Protectors where he barely stood out over their shoulders.

The newcomers landed meters away, their Mandalorian armor looking so foreign cast in stark white.

“We’ve been monitoring the area and saw a ship land,” said the leader, indistinguishable from the rest of his group. “The kind of ships associated with the rebellion. Fenn Rau, you had better swear your allegiance to us and the Empire if you don’t want to experience the punishment of a traitor.”

Rau was silent for a moment. “On my life, the next person I swear loyalty to will be the ruler of Mandalore.”

“That’s Gar Saxon, the Imperial Viceroy of Mandalore.”

“I meant the rightful ruler,” said Fenn. Out of the corner of her visor, Sabine noticed Chopper unlock Rau’s binders, freeing him completely. He held the cuffs in one claw and patted Rau’s leg with the other.

Sabine didn’t need the Force to feel the tension in the air. A beat later—she hardly even saw Rau moving before she felt a tug at her holster and one of her blasters fly free—she grabbed her remaining weapon and shot at the enemy while she, the rest of the Protectors, and even Chopper dove for cover. There wasn’t much to choose from, but the rocky landscape was decent if she just lay flat enough. She wound up behind a rock next to Ezra, his lightsaber already in his hands.

“Don’t you even think about it!” she shouted at him.

Glaring, Ezra switched to his blaster instead, shooting over their cover sporadically; the enemy was laying down an unfortunately decent cover fire. One Protector fell, armor smoking. A shadow passed over the battleground between the forces, and a _Lambda_ -class shuttle landed behind the commandos. A handful of white-clad Mandalorians debarked, smaller than the first wave, but still outnumbering the number of reinforcements Rau had. Blasters wouldn’t be good enough against these Imperial Mandos. Two more Protectors fell, sniped even as they were behind cover.

Ezra holstered his blaster and ignited his lightsaber.

A shiver of surprise rippled through the Mandalorians on both sides—enough to stall the firefight—and someone shouted, “A Jedi!”

-0-

All the enemy fire shifted to Ezra, and the landscape lit up once more with plasma bolts. It was all Ezra could do just to shield himself from each shot. But at least with him drawing all the enemy fire, the Protectors were free to fire on their enemy and several Imperial commandos fell before the return fire even out.

With the Protectors laying down a steady rate of fire, the bolts now came fewer and farther between. Ezra had more time to redirect them back toward their originator. Two white-clad enemies dropped in this fashion. But also a couple of Protectors had fallen on his side.

Clearing his mind, Ezra reached out with the Force. Wrapping an invisible hand around one Mandalorian, he jerked the man up to dangle in the air, too surprised to fire his own weapon and an easy target for the Protectors, who made short work of him. Ezra let the body drop to the ground.

That manner of working would take too long—there were so many of them—and so lifting his lightsaber, Ezra forded his way across the divide, protecting himself from fire while the Protectors behind him lay down enough plasma to keep the enemy occupied. On the Imperial’s side, Ezra had the perfect angle to redirect any overshot blasterfire from the Protectors. He bent bolt after bolt into the backs of the white-clad Mandalorians who would’ve otherwise been safe behind cover. He aimed for places where there was no armor. With him on that side, the Protectors grew bolder pressing the attack, and the bolts grew denser.

The more Ezra attacked, the more he _wanted_ to attack; a twinge of a beckoning sensation rippled in the Force, like it wanted more casualties—but then all that was left were the Protectors. Ezra clamped down on that bloodlust with a shaky breath. He’d never had that thought before.

Sabine and the Protectors slid out of hiding once it was certain their enemies had all fallen. Rau’s expression bore into Ezra. Sabine removed her helmet, and the stare with which she looked at Ezra was only half as alarmed; she actually looked uncomfortable.

“A Jedi would not be our first choice of ally, but I guess that’s not a stretch for someone like you,” Rau said, turning to Sabine.

“Oh, like a Jedi didn’t get you to surrender in the first place?” she said. “You knew they were part of the rebellion, too.”

“I didn’t expect there to be more than one,” defended Rau.

Ezra puffed out his chest. “Well, luckily there was, or else this fight would’ve ended a lot differently.”

Rau’s eyes blazed at the insinuation, and as he took a threatening step forward, Sabine jumped in between them, reclaiming her blaster from Rau’s possession and holstering it.

“They’ll send more,” Sabine spoke up. “The Empire won’t stop pursuing you.”

Fenn’s expression dulled from irritation to general dissatisfaction. “She’s right, men, we can’t stay here. We’ll return to Mandalore.”

“Where the Empire has even more control?” scoffed Sabine. She looked directly at Fenn. “Come with us. The Empire doesn’t know where our base is. You’re all good pilots and we need that right now.”

“Do you have enough holding cells for all of us?” asked Fenn mockingly.

“Not as prisoners, as partners. We’re not gonna stand against the Empire individually—but look what we just accomplished together! We have a chance if we combine forces, a _good_ chance. I’ll make sure that you work something out with Hera and Sato to your liking, you have my word,” said Sabine.

Rau fell into contemplation, and it was Ezra’s turn to look at Sabine like she was a different person. Sure, he knew she was spirited, but this was new. This was important to her. And he got the distinct feeling from Sabine looking his way that he was not to intervene this time.

“We could just go to a new location where the Empire won’t follow us.”

“And do what?” challenged Sabine. “Hide? Fish for scraps of information when you think the Empire won’t spot you? We’ve already got an established network—our connections are what warned us the Empire was coming after you.”

Ezra was dying to add his two credits to the conversation, but he also didn’t want to get elbowed in the ribs for a third time.

“This isn’t just about your pride, Rau. You’ve got men here who would fight and die for you and you owe it to them to do what’s best,” Sabine concluded.

A small part of Ezra wanted to wave a hand in front of Rau’s face, to mind trick him into accepting, to have power over the situation, but Ezra pushed that thought back. Where had it even come from?

Luckily there was no need for measures that extreme; Rau gave a shallow nod.

“We’ll see about your offer, but if we don’t like it, we have every right to leave. Agreed?” Rau held out his hand, and Sabine grasped his forearm in a binding gesture.

“Agreed.”

“Okay,” said Ezra, finally done with staying quiet. “So about getting out of here?”

“We’ll see to our dead, first,” Rau decided. Several of the Protectors were already arranging the fallen warriors into a row.

“Don’t take too long. We need to be gone the next time more come,” Sabine said. As Rau and the others gathered the largest rocks from the landscape to stack over the bodies, Ezra and Chopper approached Sabine.

“So… about getting out of here?” Ezra repeated. Sabine motioned to the Imperial shuttle that stood not one hundred meters away.

“Can you fly one of those things?”

“It was a requirement in the Academy,” she said, free hand on her hip.

“Okay, but you learned that requirement before you skipped out, right?”

“Yes, Ezra. We’re fine.”

“Then let’s help them pile rocks. We don’t know when the reinforcements—”

“Don’t get involved,” Sabine ordered.

“They can only stack so fast.”

“You’re not only a Jedi to them but an outsider,” Sabine said. “ _I’m_ not even stepping in. They need to bury their dead their own way.” As if sensing Ezra had another retort on the tip of his tongue, Sabine sent a hardened stare his way, reminiscent of Hera’s expression when she wanted to end a conversation.

Ezra folded his arms across his chest. “Last time I volunteer for one of your missions. You’re so bossy.”

“Wuh-wuuuuh,” groaned Chopper, rolling back a full meter. Sabine spun around to face Ezra.

“Sound like anyone familiar? Maybe like _you_ on that Reklam mission? I didn’t ask you to come with me. I would’ve been perfectly fine if it was just me and Rau!”

“Wop wah?”

“—And Chopper.”

Ezra scuffed one foot along the ground. He knew Hera had been mad about Reklam, but everyone else on that mission had had his back. Or so he thought.

“I’ll wait in the ship,” he muttered, turning from the scene of the Protector burial.

-0-

Hera leaned on the holotable in Chopper Base just to relieve the weight on her feet. How many hours had she been standing? Through the whole process of fixing the _Ghost_ ’s damaged engine, and now this.

“I know all the junk stations around Nal Hutta are easily picked from, but that’s well into Hutt Space,” she sighed as Phoenix Six displayed the orbiting scrap stations whose sole job was to compile all the busted technology from Nal Hutta and its many visitors.

“Hutt Space might end up being a safer target to grab ships from than anything in Imperial control,” the pilot returned. Hera knew she meant: it wouldn’t require the whole fleet to save the mission.

“An easy target doesn’t make it right. The Hutts aren’t our enemies, the Empire is.”

“Commander Sato!” called an officer from one of the monitors along the wall. “We’re receiving an incoming message from Fulcrum.”

“Play it,” he ordered, stepping up to the table. Phoenix Six immediately switched from map display mode to frequency receiver, and the Fulcrum symbol appeared in the middle of the table.

“The Empire is pursuing different options for locating Phoenix Squadron’s base. Probes may be utilized in the future,” Fulcrum said

“What a waste,” chuckled Zeb as he and Kanan approached the transmission.

“I urge caution in the future,” Fulcrum continued. “The Empire is beginning to take the rebellion as a serious threat. More and more they will unleash the brunt of their fleets on you, when before they deemed that a waste of resources.”

“Gotta find us first,” came Zeb’s not-quite-whisper from the side, sending Hera’s eyes rolling.

“That’s kinda the point of the probes,” Kanan not-quite-whispered back.

“Yeah, but they’re not _actually_ gonna find us.”

Even Sato looked their way.

“Boys!” Hera snapped. They hushed, both averting their heads from Hera and each other.

“Incoming distress call!” the officer at the wall monitors again cut through the chatter below. At Sato’s nod, Phoenix Six switched frequencies, shutting off Fulcrum’s message.

In the place of the symbol of their trusted informant was the bust of a pilot.

“I repeat! This is Green Leader. The Empire just appeared in front of our supply transport, we’re under attack!”

“Abort the mission, jump to a safe location!” Sato ordered the holographic image already scrambling across the controls in front of him.

“Green Two, Green Three!” the pilot shouted. “Watch their fighters! Set hyperspace coordinates to—” A shriek of metal emitted from the transmission as the pilot threw his hands in front of his face and the connection died.

A gasp caught in Hera’s throat. Sato ordered connection re-established with any pilot, but the lieutenants behind the comms failed to get ahold of anyone on that mission. Sato leaned his hands on the terminal, a resigned slant to his shoulders.

“Was that the supply run to Teralov?” Hera asked.

Sato shared her grimace. “Yes. The planet has no blockade, and no known roving Imperial presence.”

“When’s the next shipment going? I’ll be on it,” Zeb said, all his earlier joviality gone. Sato seemed just as surprised by this as Hera felt, and it spurred a decision of her own.

“I’ll lead it.”

“Our supplies were diminished by this unsuccessful run,” said Sato.

“We already made those people wait this long for supplies; we can’t do that again,” argued Zeb.

“He’s right,” Hera said to Sato. “We’ll send what we can now, and follow up with additional supplies later.”

“And risk more casualties,” Sato said, gesturing to the now blank holotable.

“It’ll be just the _Ghost._ I’ll outfly a whole Imperial fleet if I have to,” promised Hera. It was impossible not to be so emboldened when even a single member of her crew radiated fierce determination. It was infectious.

Sato acquiesced with a nod. Zeb took off immediately, and Kanan stepped in Hera’s way as she turned to leave.

“The kids aren’t back yet. They might still need the _Ghost_ ,” Kanan reminded her.

“We have other ships that can respond if they need anything.”

“In that case, what do you need me to do?” he asked.

“Nothing. Zeb and I have this one.” She sidestepped him but he once more edged into her path.

“Hera, I’m back. Put me on missions.”

“And I will! Just… next time.”

-0-

Hera Syndulla’s file boasted several reports embarrassing to the Empire: of her outmaneuvering ace TIE pilots, or flying a single prototype ship to take on a blockade of Star Destroyers, or evading the Empire completely by slipping into a nebula. Her borderline reckless behavior couldn’t be merely luck, there had to be something more structured behind it; something more tactical.

Out of all the rebel files Thrawn had read, this one, Captain Syndulla’s, succeeded in capturing his interest the most. Thrawn’s second readthrough of her impressive exploits was interrupted by a chirp from his desk, and the appearance of Colonel Yularen’s holographic figure.

Thrawn set aside his datapad. “Colonel, how may I be of service?”

“We’ve received distressing reports from Ryloth that the local resistance movement has had success in disrupting our mining operations. I know Ryloth is far from your sector, but this is rather the scenario you’ve dealt with before.”

Thrawn’s eyes fell to the datapad on his desk, and he scrolled back to the list of known associates. “Am I correct in assuming the resistance you’re referring to is led by Cham Syndulla?”

“You are.”

“Then I believe this endeavor will prove most illuminating in regards to my current mission. I will embark immediately.”

-0-

The blues and browns of the planet Teralov was a welcome sight in the darkness of space, and Hera breathed a little easier at the lack of Imperial ships. Maybe this mission would be easier than she thou—

Sensors beeped, warning the approach of ships from behind.

“We got TIEs incoming,” Zeb grunted from the copilot’s seat.

Of course, even this one thing couldn’t be that easy. “Just like we trained; get on the guns.”

Zeb took off down the corridor towards the dorsal laser cannon turret.

Hera’s gloves creaked around the steering controls. She banked hard, bringing the enemy ships into her viewport and opened fire as they closed in. She hit one, flying right through its brief explosion, as the other two passed her by. Their originator was in view, though—a command cruiser. Not nearly as large or as well-equipped as a Star Destroyer, but still a presence that stuttered Hera’s brain for a moment.

She swallowed and banked once more to stick to TIE-hunting; bearing out of range of the cruiser’s fire. All of the missions and training she had run, she’d at least had Chopper in the cockpit to assist while she flew.

Maybe she should’ve let Kanan come along after all.

Zeb’s shouting echoing from further back told Hera he hadn’t been able to shoot down anything yet. She spun as the TIEs fired on her; this would truly test if the repaired engines would hold. The _Ghost_ was hit, but shields held. They passed each other, and all veered to fly by again. A whoop from behind was a welcome sound—Zeb had hit one fighter. The remaining TIE was easy for Hera to target, and all Hera had to do was dodge the Imperial cruiser’s lasers until Zeb disabled its shields for Hera to finish it off with torpedos.

If anything, the people planetside wouldn’t even see the explosions in the sky.

The planet itself wasn’t what Hera expected. The supply drop locations was in a dense range of hydrospanner-thin mountains. Each mountain had homes built into its sides, with bridges connecting between them, forming what looked like a city caught high in a web. The pinnacles of each mountain was flat, and spacious enough that a whole crowd could gather safely away from the _Ghost_ setting down.

The mountains reminded Hera of the unique Lothal rock formations, and her thoughts drifted to Ezra, wondering what he and Sabine were up to, hoping the fleet didn’t have to be called in to assist when she wasn’t there to do anything about it—and with a deep breath Hera reminded herself she had to let go. Her crew could succeed on their own.

The more she focused on what she _could_ control, the parameters of her own mission, the more she could breathe.

“You okay?” Zeb asked when she joined him in the cargo bay.

“Ask me tomorrow,” Hera said. He’d already lowered the boarding ramp, so she got behind a crate and pushed. A few locals left the waiting group and approached the ship as Zeb and Hera unloaded the first of the supplies.

The relief and hope washing over their faces lifted Hera’s burden. They heaped thanks and well wishes and ‘may the Force be with you’ on their heads while taking the crates from them and pushing them back to their town.

Zeb puffed up, returning their pleasantries with a toothy grin before returning to the _Ghost_ for another crate.

Hera passed him on the boarding ramp. “It’s good to see you smile again.”

“It’s good to feel like we’re helping more than just ourselves,” he replied with a shrug. “I know I supported joining the rebellion before, but making sure _they_ survive isn’t the same as helping ordinary people like this. Like we used to.”

Hera could only wince, and lay a supportive hand on his shoulder.

“No fuel hunting or base building ever felt as meaningful as this… actually making a difference in people’s lives,” he added.

“I know it’s been rough lately… on all of us,” she said at last, “but what the rebellion is working towards will benefit the entire galaxy. It’s going to take time, and it’s going to feel like we’re not doing as much as we could, but this is—”

“Not the only way to make an impact against the Empire.” His ears flattened against his head, and Hera clamped down on any further attempt to change his mind.

Like leaves in a pond.

They finished distributing the few supplies they had to the locals, who thanked them for their generosity nonetheless. Hera received hugs and handshakes and open weeping from those who took the supply crates from her.

A plain-looking human woman approached near the end of the procession. “I’m so sorry—I was the one who called for help originally. I didn’t know who else to turn to because we were starving down here. I can’t… I still can’t believe the Empire killed the first transport you sent. If there’s anything we can do…”

The sincerity in her eyes alone made Hera’s trip here worth it, and she took the woman’s hands in hers.

“Believe me, all of us understand the risks involved in fighting the Empire. But we also know we have the ability to enact change in our galaxy, and that’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for. Don’t lose hope.”

-0-

Sabine set their confiscated shuttle down in Chopper Base’s landing zone with minimal jostling. The remaining Protectors landed their ships where there was space as Ezra debarked. Sato and Hera already waiting on the pad, Kanan and Zeb approaching from behind. The faces the leadership wore was starkly different from the severe welcome Ezra had received after the Reklam mission. Both Sato and Hera looked impressed, and Hera was even smiling.

“What happened out there?” Hera asked as Chopper rolled up to her like he hadn’t seen her in months. He hugged her leg and she patted his dome.

“We needed ships and pilots, didn’t we?” Sabine said as she exited the ship. She removed her helmet and there was nothing but pride on her face.

A very different ending than the Reklam mission.

The cockpits of the Protector ships lifted, and one by one, the pilots descended, including Rau, back in his armor.

“The Protectors joined us? All of them?” asked Hera with wide eyes.

“All that were left,” Rau cut in as he approached. “The Empire tried to wipe us out, and Sabine suggested that we’d have better odds combining forces. As long as we do not fall _under_ you.”

“I’m sure a mutually beneficial arrangement can be reached,” Sato said, gesturing towards Chopper Base. He and Sabine ushered the Protectors in, the first time Rau had ever been allowed to freely walk on Atollon.

“Does this mean the mission to take out the Lothal factory is back on track?” Ezra asked once the Mandalorians had migrated away.

“We’ll have to take that up with rebel command,” Hera said. “You have to understand, Ezra, this is a significant change and be ready for others to want to gauge the veracity of the Protector’s sudden allegiance.”

“What, you think this is a trick? They’re not lying, Hera, they really had nothing left for them back on Concord Dawn—I felt it.”

“But command has to come to that same judgment by their own means.”

“So more waiting,” he grumbled. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he headed off in the direction of the _Ghost_ where he could be alone. Lothal had fallen so far from the priority list that Ezra couldn’t help but take it personally. No one was pushing for this anymore, or for him.

“Ezra,” Kanan called. He slowed to a halt until the Jedi Knight caught up.

“How did it go out there?”

Part of Ezra whispered that he knew. Kanan already knew about the darkside running away with him, the frightening bloodlust, the way his hands shook as he reigned in his emotions. But Ezra hoped he didn’t.

“Like Sabine said, we got extra pilots,” Ezra said.

“I’m not talking about the mission, I’m asking about you.”

All Ezra’s uncertainties and fears circling his relation with the Force needed to be talked out with someone. Someone with a better grasp on the Force than himself, who could tell Ezra what was going on. But Kanan wasn’t that person.

He needed Maul’s understanding.

“I’m fine, Kanan. Come find me when Lothal is important to everyone again.” And he pressed on to the _Ghost_ where his cabin would at least be his for a little bit.


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest-starring in this chapter are Cham, Numa, and Captain Slavin.

A vibrant garden, tall and lush, dominated the entire center of the house; a common feature when hardly any indigenous vegetation survived and even less thrived on Ryloth. The reliefs chiseled into the mesa from which the Syndulla mansion was carved, displayed popular scenes from the planet’s history, or the family’s specific lineage, across various walls. But the family mosaic on the back wall of the office told Thrawn the most: a wealthy project, hand crafted from a variety of glass and stone, and assembled into the shape of a picture instead of being painted, or a projected holopicture. A status symbol if it had been anywhere else, yet here it was, hidden away in the office.

The family depicted—parents and a daughter—looked happy; unbothered.

“The rebels have retreated to the caves, Grand Admiral,” Captain Slavin announced as he entered the office. “The mines are back up and running for now.”

Slavin was the kind of Imperial Thrawn ran into at every rank, unimaginative and lacking initiative, who would immediately cleave to someone else’s plan since he certainly couldn’t come up with one himself. Why the Empire had only put a captain in charge of planetary operations, Thrawn didn’t know. He suspected favoritism or nepotism played a part as it usually did when he came across inept officers, because Slavin hadn’t made one beneficial order since inheriting Ryloth from his predecessor.

The human continued stuffily. “I have increased security per your orders, though if I may, the threat is no longer here but out in the province.”

“Underestimating the enemy is what lost you the mines in the first place, Captain.”

Slavin fidgeted, heat lighting his face in patches of embarrassment. “The changes are ready for your inspection, sir.”

“First, I want you to tell me what you see,” Thrawn said, motioning to the mosaic. The Captain approached, wearing the same uncomfortable expression as Thrawn’s crew did when they felt they were being tested.

“It’s just Cham Syndulla’s family.”

Thrawn couldn’t hold Slavin’s denseness against him when so many of the Imperials under Thrawn’s leadership started out the same as him. “And what can we extrapolate from that?”

“That… he had a family?”

“I’m sure you know by now how important the concept of family is to the Twi’leki people. Look at the Syndulla mansion. Many cultures would consider a residence of this size to be a measure of wealth and status, but it is quite normal for houses here to grow to this size. Generations of families live in one house, digging a new level further into the mesa when necessary. A piece like this: devoid of the extended family, practically hidden away in a personal office, tells us who Cham Syndulla values most.”

“And… that helps us how?”

“Nothing you learn about your enemy will ever be irrelevant, Captain Slavin.”

-0-

“Coming out of hyperspace… now,” Hera called. Blue streaks of light faded to the deceptively calm view of Ryloth. An anxiousness settled around her, prickling in her fingertips and between her lekku; Hera couldn’t even tell where this reaction came from—the idea of finally returning to her home planet, or the fact that her father had sounded so broken when his call for help reached the rebellion.

Sabine gasped behind her, and it was as if she had heralded a ring of outward-facing Star Destroyers herself because the blockade suddenly came into focus for Hera.

“What are we up against?” Kanan murmured from the co-pilot’s seat. All Hera could do was throw herself across the controls, scrambling the _Ghost_ ’s signature.

“They’ve got double the standard blockade size,” Sabine said. The surprise in her voice didn’t bode well with Hera—if the girl who had been trained by the Empire found this behavior odd, it was anyone’s guess what was waiting for them on the planet. Without another word, Sabine climbed down into the gunner’s seat to wait.

“Well, I can see why my father said no one else had been able to sneak past the Imperials.” Every muscle in Hera’s body tensed. Did the Empire really want Ryloth this badly?

“You know,” Kanan spoke up, “I’m a little surprised Cham reached out to us at all, considering we didn’t part on the best of terms last time.”

Their last mission with her father that acquired them the cruiser carrier felt long enough ago to be a different lifetime. Not that that disaster of a mission was something she was eager to remember; after all, resentful was her father’s default emotion and they had parted with as much between them as before.

“Every other contact must’ve fallen through.” Nerves buzzing and focus stretched across all the controls in front of her, she could only dedicate so much attention to talking. Her replies had turned unfiltered and sharp.

“Are you gonna be okay on this mission?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She held her breath from the moment the _Ghost_ slipped under the entire blockade until they safely touched down at the bottom of a ravine. Her exhale was about as loud as her ship cycling through its cool down routine. The barren surroundings, uniformly beige, weren’t familiar to her, but these were the coordinates her father had transmitted when he first reached out for help.

“All hands on crates!” Hera called on her way into the cargo bay. In addition to the supplies attached magnetically to the hull, anti-grav crates lined the bay—and even Chopper got behind one of those to push out into the ravine.

The moment sunlight and the dry air hit her, Hera paused. She was home.

Caves dotted the layered ravine walls, and faces dotted one cave entrance. Twi’leks ran out, their expressions of exuberant relief cutting Hera right to the core as they took the supplies from the crew to escort themselves. A blue figure flew out of the crowd and flung her arms around Hera.

“Numa!” Hera cried, hugging her back. “It’s so good to see you safe!”

“We weren’t sure anybody was coming,” Numa said as she pulled away, the pain of the situation tempering her smile.

Hera held Numa’s arms tighter. “How bad is it?”

“Your father’s inside; he can tell you.”

With the help of the resistance, the crates were unloaded in an orderly fashion and pushed into the winding cave system. The locals led the way through twists and turns and forks in the tunnels until it opened into a spacious cavern, segmented by colorful but meager beddings. More Twi’leks inhabited this area, crowded around the earliest supplies brought inside, like the impoverished masses from Hera’s childhood at the arrival of clone battalions.

One orange Twi’lek stayed back, practically blending in with the cavern wall. But Hera would know that face anywhere. She broke from her crew and the crowd to approach him.

“Father,” Hera greeted with a bob of her head. “What’s happened here? The last time you used the caves…” The Clone War was ravaging the planet.

“Imperials now occupy the entire Tann Province,” Cham said curtly. “We’ve been forced back into these caves. Luckily they haven’t found us, but I suspect they’re getting close.”

Chopper bumped into her leg. With Numa organizing the Twi’leks into a line to pick from the supplies, Hera’s crew was free to join her. Hera took a second look at her people. Males, females, children, only some looking part of the resistance, others like they came along because there was no other choice. The same bleak faces she saw a decade and a half earlier. Her stomach plunged at the thought of their repeated suffering.

“Is this all that’s left of the resistance?” Hera asked.

“We’ve split up for safety. This is maybe a quarter of our numbers,” Cham said, and Hera breathed a little easier. “I underestimated their commander, Captain Slavin. His previous attacks were clumsy but this one was swift, precise. Unlike him. He broke through our resistance lines and made our home into his headquarters.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kanan said. The others shared his sympathetic expression, and if something was to bring them all together, it might as well have been a tragedy of Hera’s.

“Is there anything else you need?” asked Hera.

“To reverse this latest string of bad luck,” Cham said. “Our last three attempts at a counterattack have been routed just as they began. Without any insight into their proceedings, it’s like we’re fighting ghosts. _We’re_ supposed to be the ghosts!”

“If it’s intel you need, I can get that for you,” Hera decided. She felt the gazes of all her crew—most of her crew—land on her.

“So, we’re changing the mission based on a new understanding of the situation?” Ezra spoke up, his thinly-veiled accusation sliding right under her skin. But Zeb was there to give Ezra a shove.

“I’m not asking any of you to come with me,” she said. “In fact I’d be faster on my own. But I have to do _something.”_

“And while you get intel, we’ll do what we’ve always done—thin the Empire,” said Zeb.

“Every great plan needs a distraction,” added Kanan. The rest of them looked to Hera, that old determination crackling through the air.

Chopper remained strangely silent, so she let a hand fall onto his head.

“You don’t have to go along with this, you know,” Hera said to him. One of his spindly arms batted her hand away from his flat dome.

“Wop! Wahh wopwop,” he said, as determined to accompany her as the rest of her crew.

“Numa!” Hera called. “I need to borrow your clothes.” Her friend shot the most confused expression her way, but Hera wouldn’t make it two steps into an Imperial occupied residence wearing a flight suit.

“I don’t think you realize how many Imperials occupy the house,” Cham said.

-0-

The boots were the last part of the uniform that Ezra pulled on. The whole ensemble fit a little snugger than he remembered, but then again the rebellion hadn’t infiltrated the Empire in awhile. The two scout troopers Zeb and Ezra had subdued in the ravine mid-patrol lay bound in the back of the cave. Sabine had already changed into the other scout trooper uniform and had flown off with Hera on one of the speeders.

Ezra was the last to exit the cave, the faceplate of his helmet swung up, to find Kanan waiting by the remaining speeder bike. The very air turned thicker the closer Ezra approached.

“Ready for this?” Kanan asked.

They were helping, which was fine, but Kanan was the one to volunteer Ezra for the mission to Ryloth to begin with. Ezra would’ve rather stayed behind on Atollon to search for the Sith holocron, but instead he was here.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” sighed Ezra. He mounted the speeder.

Kanan edged in front of the handles, blocking him. “You’re carrying a lot of distress; I’m worried it’s starting to cloud your mind.”

The first retort that came to Ezra’s mind was sarcastic; the second was petulant, and he just sat there feeling bad over both of them. Ezra would have to eventually stop blaming Kanan for their time apart when the man voluntarily came back… but why was it so hard to move past that?

“Part of a Jedi’s wisdom comes from letting go of the things that are out of our control,” Kanan said. “I suspect that you’ve been carrying a lot on your shoulders lately, but not everything about every mission has to fall to you. Not even the missions you lead.”

“No problem there,” Ezra said with a self-depreciating snort. “Hera won’t be putting me in charge of anything anytime soon.”

Cham, Zeb and Numa, wearing a bright orange flight suit, rounded a corner in the ravine, all riding their own blurrg. Kanan’s jaig eyes pointed straight at Ezra.

“You’ve been dwelling in the past more and more. It’s neither healthy nor helpful.”

“I know,” Ezra said, lacking that earlier attitude. It had turned into a habit somewhere along the way, a vicious loop he couldn’t escape.

Cham pulled up alongside them. “I’ll give you ten minutes to get into position. Wait for my signal.” And he took off. When Numa’s blurrg came close enough, Kanan climbed on behind her.

“Ezra,” Kanan called. “It’s easier to let go of more when you trust that others can perform their own jobs. Don’t worry about what Sabine and Hera are doing; focus on your own task.”

Ezra snapped the faceplate of his helmet shut. “I’ll remember that.” He revved the speeder and took off down the ravine.

It wasn’t just Sabine and Hera infiltrating the Empire that caused all his distress, though that was a piece of it. Too many thoughts and feelings had compounded over the months to be untangled anymore, but much of it stemmed from the Force. Ezra liked what the darker side had helped him achieve, and the emotions that swarmed as a result—confused or otherwise—he could bend into fuel for that power. There had to be some sort of middle ground, where Ezra could learn from both Jedi and Sith teachings. After all, it was all the Force. And he had long doubted that Kanan had all the answers, anyway.

Ten minutes later, Ezra sped towards the mesa Cham had indicated in their makeshift brief. It overlooked a particularly deep section of the ravine, and Ezra just made out the white plastoid of a stormtrooper squad inside when a light flashed halfway up the mesa. Cham’s signal. Seconds later, the mesa rumbled with an explosion near its top, collapsing half of the cliff face and surely noticeable to any Imperial within twenty miles.

Ezra punched into a higher gear. Just as chunks of mesa slid into the ravine, Ezra was close enough to roll off his speeder as if he’d been a victim of the attack.

The distraction had begun.

-0-

Two stormtroopers guarded the gate in front of Hera’s family house, just like Cham had warned. Hera didn’t have to feign emotional distress when the sight of the house alone kicked her all the way back to her childhood, to war and starvation and uncertainty in the face of adults telling her it would be all right. To her years when she was too small to be of any help, but still old enough to understand the suffering happening around her.

Sabine eased their speeder to a stop at the gate, pulling Hera’s thoughts back to the present. Hera struggled against the binders on her wrists for show.

“Where did you find her?” one stormtrooper demanded. Almost as chilling as attempting a ruse against the Empire was the harsh voice Sabine put on to sell her authenticity.

“Caught this one on my patrol trying to emplace an explosive device—probably in league with the attack that just started,” Sabine said. Hera could feel the color deepen on her face; Sabine wasn’t supposed to _over_ sell her.

The second stormtrooper waved them in. “Take the prisoner inside for processing. The transport will come pick her up later.”

Hera’s sigh of relief was cut short when she saw exactly how many stormtroopers occupied the property. White plastoid patrolled the grounds, across the long balconies, and through the front door; whenever one soldier disappeared inside, another exited from a different door, always roving.

As Sabine parked the speeder close to the house, a small black shape caught Hera’s eye—Chopper, hastily painted in Imperial colors, stood staring at the wrecked Y-wing at the edge of the property.

“He’s joining us, right?” Sabine intoned before yanking Hera by the arm into the looming house carved into the mesa. A rough gesture, but it would look good to the nearby stormtroopers and that’s all that mattered.

“He’ll be along. He hasn’t seen this place, either, in… years,” Hera said. The first chance they were alone, Hera dropped her binders and Sabine sprung the faceplate of her helmet.

“So where are we headed?” the girl asked.

“My father said the Imperials use this place as a base of operations, so somewhere in here is the command center with all the information we need.”

-0-

Blaster fire shot overhead to be swallowed by the thick dust of the avalanche. Ezra couldn’t see Cham’s group at the foot of the mesa or the Imperials on the other side of the rubble, and he figured they couldn’t see one another, either. But they still shot like they could.

He climbed through the dust and debris until he came to the stormtroopers.

“More are behind me!” Ezra lied. “They’re flanking us, we need backup!”

A second explosion shook the ground, avalanching a mesa well behind Ezra into the ravine. The flooding dust thickened around them. As the stormtrooper called in a request for reinforcements to “sector 03-05,” the metal rumblings of an Imperial walker echoed in the distance.

The other troopers charged for the resistance, but strode in the opposite direction, lightsaber hilt in hand, until the two legs of the AT-DP solidified in the low visibility. It fired at the origin of the Cham’s blaster bolts, and troopers cheered over the frequency in Ezra’s helmet that they had their enemy on the run.  

Ezra edged behind the walker and with a quick flourish of his blade, cut the legs out from under it. His lightsaber was disengaged before the head hit the ground.

-0-

From the dry landscape and the mansion’s plain exterior, Sabine expected a sparse house, much like her own family’s home back on Krownest; cold minimalism that failed to provide any inspiration aside from a blank canvas she could never touch. But there was an inescapable warmth to Hera’s home, from the tapestries that hung along the walls that were bare of motifs, to the carved ceilings, to the tiled floor that could be mosaics all on their own. The sheer color decorating every surface took Sabine’s breath away. Hera had to pull her into dark rooms to hide from running stormtroopers twice, because Sabine sure wasn’t watching where they were going. Stormtroopers, much less bothered officers, and even a mouse droid dragged out their search of the house.

Halfway through the second floor, the corridor ended with trees. No, not ended, but circled, diverting to either side as a balcony walkway that ringed the far walls. What it made room for was an overlook onto the first floor gardens.

Hera continued along the perimeter walkway toward the opposite wing, but Sabine stopped with a gasp at the view. The trees themselves towered over Sabine on the second level, leading her eyes down to the ground floor covered with flowers and shrubs, colors clashing beautifully in an encouraging vibrancy. The greenery was a defiant contrast to the harshness outside.

Sabine reached out to touch the closest tree branch. “Your home is beautiful,” she said almost reverently. And despite the Imperials, it felt lived in, unlike Krownest.

White glinted below; a pair of troopers crossed through the garden on their rounds, and Sabine shrank back against the wall. When she hazarded a glance below, Sabine saw a black astromech following them. Chopper was getting to work.

“It doesn’t feel like my home anymore,” Hera muttered. “More like an eerily familiar military base. Let’s keep moving.”

Halfway down the opposite wing of the house, the turbolift landed on their floor and the doors opened for two officers.

Sabine’s armor shuddered as Hera shoved her into the nearest room before diving after her; luckily it was an unused room where they could hide in the darkness.

“Captain,” an unusually smooth voice said, nearing, “you kept the most artistic piece in the house hidden from me since I arrived.”

“I consider that junk, Grand Admiral, not art. The next time the rounds picked up the refuse I was going to have them take that away, as well.”

“Junk! Slavin, you’ve been here months and you don’t know what a Kalikori is?”

The tiniest cry came from Hera before her hand clamped over her mouth. Sabine merely increased the audio range in her helmet, holding her breath.

The smooth voice continued, “I want you to take this to my transport; I will be returning to my ship presently.”

“I’ll… box it up for you, sir.” The footsteps separated, one in the direction Sabine and Hera had come from, the other returning to the lift.

Hera staggered back into the hallway and Sabine was right on her heels to catch a glimpse through the trees of a white uniform receding down the opposite wing. The conversation still rattled through Sabine’s head.

“The Empire sent a _Grand Admiral_ to oversee Ryloth?” she hissed. The corridor lighting was certainly dim, but still Sabine could tell that Hera’s face had gone pale. Her lekku swirled as she hurried for the turbolift and punched the panel next to the door, recalling it.

“I need to get that back,” Hera said, her voice a half gasp. “It’s my family’s Kalikori and I’m taking it before we leave.”

“We’re what?” asked Sabine. The lift landed and Hera bolted inside, leaving Sabine no other option but to follow. “What is this thing, anyway?”

“It’s my family’s heirloom, our history; our legacy. It’s the last thing I have of my mother’s and I won’t let it wind up displayed for some Imperial officer, no matter how many ships he commands.”

Sabine shut her scout trooper helmet, groaning. “I’m with you, but the others can only buy us so much time.” Sabine didn’t know why she was going along with this when a small voice in the back of her mind screamed that they were in over their heads—double the ships of a standard blockade, the house overrun by Imperials, and a Grand Admiral overseeing operations. They should’ve stuck to the plan instead of bolting off on initiative, like Ezra on Reklam Station. But then again, it was probably better to go in the direction the Grand Admiral _didn’t._

The third floor, surprisingly, stood deserted.

Hera inched out of the lift with her borrowed blaster drawn. “He’s probably in my father’s office, which is where I bet we’ll find the information we’re looking for anyway. Set to stun?”

“I should be asking _you_ that,” Sabine said. Hera sent a look her way, but the wild gleam in her eyes was certainly something Sabine had never seen before.

Hera led the way to a door a quarter of way down the wing. It slid aside and just as the Imperial Captain looked up from behind the desk, Hera stunned him unconscious. By the time Sabine rushed in with her own pistol, Hera was already scooping up a wooden object from an open transportation case on the desk. She held it in both hands, letting her thumb run across the different blocks that hung from either side of the top bar.

“That’s your heirloom?” Sabine asked, pushing the captain off the desk and palming his code cylinder with her other hand. It fit easily into the monitor on the desk.

“Yes, my family’s Kalikori. I haven’t gotten to hold this in at least ten years.” Hera just stood there, gazing at the piece in her hands.

Sabine’s keystrokes returned with an angry beep from the terminal. She flipped her faceplate back up again.

“Hera. ...Hera!”

The Twi’lek jumped out of her thoughts, from a level of distraction that Sabine was used to Ezra being caught in, not Hera.

“This isn’t connected to the network; there’s nothing here,” Sabine said. “The information hub is somewhere else in the complex.”

Hera hugged the Kalikori to her chest.

_“Captain!”_ a small, tinny voice called from the floor. _“Did you send this astromech to copy data from the network? He’s being very pushy.”_

Sabine grabbed the Imperial-issued communicator from the officer’s belt. “For once, I wish Ezra was here,” she sighed. She cleared her throat, and put on her best standard officer whine. “Yes, I did send that droid to recover all the files I still don’t have access to. Let him copy everything.” The silence that followed stretched on long enough that Sabine was sure a security element was being sent her way. Her chestplate was certainly thrumming along with her pounding heart.

_“Y-yes, sir.”_

Sabine dropped the communicator and breathed a loud sigh of relief. Hera looked just as surprised as Sabine felt.

“How did I do?” she asked.

“Between you and Ezra? You wouldn’t be my first choice,” Hera said through a smile.

“I’m not my first choice, either. So Chopper found the hub?”

“Probably the basement. Let’s get down there in case he runs into any more trouble.”

Sabine grabbed the code cylinder and shut her helmet. So far, so good. She only realized once she made it to the door that Hera wasn’t behind her, but instead was slowly looking around the office, especially at the glowing portrait on the back wall.

“Hera!” Sabine shouted. In those clothes and that level of distraction, Hera really did feel like a completely different person. Hera turned to follow and Sabine opened the door.

To find herself face to face with a blue-skinned Imperial. A gasp ricocheted inside her helmet, and before her mind could even spur herself to recoil, the world went dark.

-0-

Ezra followed on the heels of the stormtroopers as the haze cleared. The rebels had descended into the ravine to lead the Empire away from the direction of the Syndulla home.

Despite the stormtroopers shooting at the rebels, one persistent blue blade kept them from hitting anything. The hyperfocus was setting in; his friends were in danger and he had to eliminate the threat. Ezra let his own blade spring to life again, hacking down each stormtrooper he caught up with.

The rebels soon skidded to a halt; in the ravine in front of them was a formation of troopers, in front of three AT-DPs and two AT-AT walkers. Cham’s group scattered for cover against the craggy ravine wall as the Empire opened fire. Ezra hacked down the remaining troopers on his side; there had been ten in all. But then a whine came from overhead, and Ezra looked up to see three TIE fighters sliding into range. They laid strafing fire down into the ravine, and Ezra dove for cover himself. The TIEs arced wide to come back through the ravine from the other direction. There was no way Ezra would be able to take those out besides…

Ezra pulled the snug helmet off and shook out his hands. He needed the room. He closed his eyes and reached out, into the mind of the lead pilot, and sent him veering into one of the ships on the side, destroying them both in mid-air. The third TIE swerved out of the ravine—and out of range—but seconds later angled to approach again.

When the Sith holocron had first taught Ezra to take over someone’s mind, he knew it was far more invasive than the mind tricks he’d learned from Kanan. This wasn’t just suggestion. It robbed a person of their will, and that knowledge alone had kept Ezra from trying it out on anyone, even the little dokmas that scuttled around Chopper Base. But those inhibitions evaporated when his friends were in trouble.

Ezra reached into the mind of the last pilot, could feel the Imperial’s thumbs on the triggers as the ship again dove into the ravine. The pilot fought for control of his own mind but Ezra pushed harder. The moment he had full control, Ezra sent the ship flying straight into enemy ranks.

The resulting explosion shook the ravine as badly as Cham’s earlier blasts. A beat of stunned silence fell on everyone there as flames and black smoke poured into the sky. Ezra even saw Kanan’s mask fully turn toward him as he approached with his visor all the way up. But then blaster fire came from the vicinity of the wreckage as Imperials forced their way through. Ezra and Kanan’s lightsabers danced, deflecting what they could. Kanan stood protecting Numa and Cham against one side of the ravine so Ezra slid to a stop next to Zeb.

“This feels a little familiar!” laughed Zeb from behind one large boulder. He popped up to fire two rounds from his bo-caster while Ezra deflected three different shots. With the enemy so far away, those shots only dug into the ravine floor—much to Ezra’s annoyance.

One AT-DP fumbled around the wreckage. Its head swiveled to the side of the ravine where Kanan’s group hid, and it sent a burst of rapid fire to them. Hot dust hit Ezra like a Lothal windstorm. When it cleared, their cover was gone and Numa, Kanan and Cham were scattered. Ezra darted across the ravine. He deflected two bolts from hitting Kanan as the man scrambled to his feet.

“Protect the others!” Kanan ordered, igniting his lightsaber.

“Let’s rush the AT-DP,” Ezra countered. “We can take it together!”

“No—if we charge, everyone else’ll be defenseless.”

So Ezra edged aside to be a lightsaber barrier for Cham, sending enemy fire ricocheting where it wouldn’t do any good because the Empire refused to enter a closer range.

-0-

Sabine had crashed to the ground even harder in armor, the blue ray of a stun shot running the entirety of her body. Vengeance swelled in Hera’s veins to take the place of confusion, but with the Imperial’s blaster now trained on her, most options firing in her mind were inadvisable.

A smirk creased his features, confident and commanding. “What an unexpected pleasure,” he said in that same smooth voice she heard earlier, “for the resistance infiltration to be led by Hera Syndulla herself. Drop your weapon, please.”

Hera’s lekku shivered at the almost native pronunciation of her name; it felt unnatural for it to come from a non-Twi’lek. And in fact, she had no idea what the Grand Admiral was—if he wasn’t the angriest Pantoran she’d ever come across—but clutching her Kalikori, she wasn’t about to chance another look at him. Even with her eyes downcast, she could feel his gaze digging into her as he stepped through the doorway. She pulled Numa’s blaster from its holster and let it fall to the floor.

“But forgive me,” he continued, “we have not yet had the opportunity to be formally introduced. My name is Grand Admiral Thrawn, and I have enjoyed becoming familiar with your work, Captain.”

The door closed behind him and with his blaster still at the ready, Hera obligingly moved in the direction he pointed. She ended up in her father’s office chair.

Steeling her nerves, she shot him a glare only to get the full brunt of his red eyes in return. “Isn’t Ryloth a little beneath your rank?” Hera demanded. Her father’s resistance movement, while tenacious, was certainly not a large enough thorn in the Empire’s side to require such an Imperial presence—

A realization turned her lekku cold. “Unless… you’re here to bombard the planet.” She hardly got the words out with how little air was still in her lungs.

“By no means,” he said, those bright red eyes refusing to leave her face. “What an unnecessary waste of resources. And when it comes to the Empire efficiently acquiring its resources, no rank is too high to contribute.” Holstering his blaster, Thrawn returned to where Sabine lay unconscious by the door and flipped up her visor. “Not who I was expecting.”

“What do you want?” Hera called, ire spiking. It dulled in proportion to the distance Thrawn put between himself and Sabine as he neared the desk again.

“Everything I want has already been achieved,” he said. “This is not a negotiation, Captain Syndulla. My participation on Ryloth ended with the reclamation of the mines; your fate and that of your friend lies wholly in the hands of Captain Slavin.” He paused, and both looked at the Imperial lying on the floor. “Until he feels like joining us, you will be held as prisoners of the Empire.”

Hera clutched her Kalikori tighter to her chest. “You can do your worst—march in here and push my people from their homes, capture us, torture us—but you will _never_ break us. Our will to be free cannot be extinguished no matter how much the Empire tries.”

His brow raised in the slightest betrayal of an emotion. Intrigue? Perhaps surprise? “I understand now how you inspire a crew to follow you. However, I am well aware of our different approaches to warfare. The Empire fights for conquest; to win. You, your crew, and your people, fight to survive. A miscommunication, if you will.”

Hera’s lekku shook at his audacity to reduce an intergalactic war into terms so benign. As if he was merely an objective observer and not a cog in the machine of her enemy.

“How is Commander Titus faring in your custody?” Thrawn asked in a tone all too conversational as he neared her chair.

“Better than any of us would in the Empire’s,” Hera ground out with a glare to match. His unshakeable calm was both infuriating and something she wished she could achieve.

“Let us test your assumption.”

Hera shrunk in her seat when Thrawn leaned far too close to utilize the desktop communicator, calling security to the office. If she was to get herself and Sabine out of this mess, it had to be now.

She thrust one fist straight up, aiming for his chin, but the quickest tilt of his head angled him just out of her reach. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her out of the chair. Her arm was then jerked around behind her back, and the next thing she knew, her chest was forced against the desk, and she was held there, trapped by the uncomfortable twist of her own arm. Her other arm just hung at her side, stubbornly clutching her Kalikori. Of course, Thrawn holding her down with one hand on her arm and the other on her opposite shoulder under what felt like all his body weight didn’t help, either.

“Come now, let’s not fight in this manner,” tutted Thrawn. “A display like this should be beneath you, Captain.”  

“What are you?” Hera asked. Her voice sounded so soft compared to the blood pounding through her ears.

“A Grand Admiral of the Empire.”

“But what _are_ you?”

“I am Chiss.”

Her assumption of Pantoran was way off.

Two stormtroopers entered the office, and Hera was freed of being pinned to the desk only to enter the vice grip of the stormtroopers. By the time they had her, she realized her Kalikori was gone.

“Thank you for safekeeping this for me,” Thrawn said in that insufferably calm voice.

Hera glared at him through stinging eyes. That was it; now everything had truly been taken from her. Her home, her freedom, her family’s legacy. “I should’ve smashed it when I had the chance.”

“You surprise me. Is your history worth so little to you?” The way he ran his fingers along the hanging blocks elicited the same ire in her as when he had been too close to Sabine.

“My family legacy belongs to us alone. It’s not for some collector’s curiosity.”

“With such vehemence, how strange that your Kalikori was left behind to fall into an outsider’s hands to begin with. I thank you for your hospitality, Captain Syndulla. It is a pity our first encounter might well be our last.” The thin curve of Thrawn’s mouth that passed for a smile was the last thing Hera saw before being herded out of the room, made to drag Sabine’s unconscious body with her.

-0-

Thrawn had expected this trip to Ryloth to be beneficial when it came to understanding another component of Phoenix squadron, but every possible learning opportunity paled in comparison to meeting Hera Syndulla in person. The ISB’s reports of her failed to capture her stunning spirit; she was similar to her father that way, but there was a cunning and an intellect all her own that was unexpectedly appealing. 

Manually studying the texture of the Kalikori, Thrawn regarded this not only as a token of victory over the local resistance, but also as a reminder of his first meeting with Hera Syn—

Slavin groaned loudly from behind the desk as if he wanted everyone on the third floor to know he was awake. Finding his feet turned into an ordeal, but finally he eased himself into the desk chair. Upon noticing Thrawn there, Slavin’s face heated in that pattern of embarrassment that was default for him anymore, and popped to his feet. 

“I leave Hera Syndulla and Sabine Wren to your capable hands, Captain,” Thrawn said, packing the Kalikori in the case left on the desk. “If you will excuse me.”

Slavin’s face flushed with confidence at the perceived compliment. “Yes, of course, Grand Admiral. I’ll see you to your ship.” He rounded the desk and walked with Thrawn to the lift. “If I may ask, what exactly happened once the rebels barged into my office?” 

“They did not make it out again. They appeared to lack an exit strategy, but do not expect the same for your next encounter with them.” As the turbolift hit the ground floor, Thrawn glanced Slavin’s way and noticed the code cylinder was missing from his uniform. 

“I advise an inventory check before you do anything else,” Thrawn said, stepping out, “in case the rebels took anything of value.”

“I’ll task somebody to do so immediately,” promised Slavin. He followed on Thrawn’s heels all the way outside the mansion where a Lambda-class shuttle waited in the courtyard, boarding ramp flanked by two black plastoid death troopers. 

“These soldiers will assist with security,” Thrawn said, and with a wave of his hand the troopers marched forward. “Utilize them well.”

Slavin fumbled with a confused answer of compliance, and Thrawn boarded his shuttle.

-0-

The falling TIE fighter had taken out most of the walkers, but as Ezra and Kanan scrambled to save the rebels from being shot—which at this point felt more like the Force moving his arms than Ezra—one remaining AT-AT pushed between the TIE wreckage and the ravine wall. It screeched, durasteel against durasteel, amplified by the ravine, warning the rebels of incoming firepower. 

They wouldn’t stand a chance if it started shooting; Ezra had to act now.

But all of a sudden, the plasma bolts ceased. The stormtroopers, hidden behind rocky cover just like the rebels, had lowered their weapons. The AT-AT squeezed past the wreckage and leveled. A larger-than-life hologram of an Imperial officer appeared, projected by the vehicle. 

“Cham Syndulla!” a voice in time with the hologram announced. “I would have a word with you. It concerns your daughter.” 

Despite Numa pulling at him to stay behind cover, Cham left his hiding position to reveal himself to the Imperials. 

“Where is she?” he shouted back. 

“She and the girl, Sabine Wren, are prisoners of the Empire. They’ll face my blaster squad unless you surrender to me.”

Worry flared in Ezra, and frustration that he didn’t argue harder to be the one to infiltrate the house instead of Sabine. Both Kanan and Numa attempted to dissuade Cham from agreeing, but a swift slice of his hand silenced them. 

“The resistance is more than myself. I won’t leave my daughter to the hands of our occupiers,” Cham said to them. He turned back to the hologram, calling out, “Captain Slavin, I will surrender to you, but what assurance will you give me that my daughter and the girl will be released?”

“Only that if you do not arrive for the exchange by sundown, they will both be terminated.” The hologram faded. Imperial forces withdrew the way they had come, past the TIE wreckage that had now collapsed in on itself. 

The rebels congregated around Cham, weapons still at the ready with the Empire so close.

“We can’t trust the Empire’ll hold their end of the bargain!” Numa said. 

“Kanan and I should go in first,” Ezra spoke up. “We have lightsabers, we’ll take them by surprise—”

“No,” Cham interjected. “We do this my way. We follow the Empire’s demands.” He led them back through the ravine, leaving Ezra to fall in next to Kanan. 

“If this is a trap, we’ll be the best chance at getting everyone out!” Ezra protested.

“Not every problem can be solved by action and by the Force,” Kanan said, his voice weary. Ezra assumed the fight had taken a lot out of him—after all, this had been the first mission that required him to be so active in months. “Let go of what’s out of your control. You’ve got to trust Hera and Sabine. They’ve been in circumstances like this before; they know what to do.” 

-0-

No matter how many frayed wires Hera spliced together, the cellar door refused to budge. Creaking sounded from further inside their makeshift detention room as Sabine finally sat up in all that armor.

“What… what happened?” she asked, pulling off her scout trooper helmet.

“Met the Grand Admiral,” said Hera. She left the destroyed panel next to the door and sat next to Sabine where even in the low light, the resentment on the girl’s face was obvious. Hera restricted her hand to falling on Sabine’s shoulder when she would’ve loved to draw her into a hug. “Listen, I’m sorry, Sabine. It was selfish of me to go after my Kalikori when the intel was the mission all along. And now we have neither.”

“Why did you? Place that thing above the mission, I mean.” 

The question—the truth—stung. She hugged her knees to her chest, and her answer started out softer than she expected. “Everyone’s been so different lately. It’s like our spirit, our rapport, was stolen by Malachor. Then to come back to my own home to find it taken by the Empire? I… I couldn’t let them have my mother, too.”

Sabine sighed. The next expression she flashed Hera’s way was understanding. “If that office had connectivity like it should’ve, we could’ve gotten our data, but it looked like they didn’t finish setting it up. We had to check the third floor anyway, so it wasn’t like we went out of our way.”

“That’s a much more generous perspective than I was expecting.” Hera moved her hand up to pat Sabine’s cheek; if the girl didn’t initiate a hug, Hera would refrain herself to something simpler.

“Well, we can’t both be spouting dire straits.”

“Wah-waaaaah!” came a voice from outside the cellar. Hera’s spirits lifted straight up. 

“Chopper!” She ran to the door. “Get us out of here!” Barely a minute later, Chopper spliced the door open. He entered with a full twirl, crowing excitedly and arms flapping. 

“Did you actually get it?” asked Hera, kneeling next to him. Chopper withdrew a datacard from a hidden compartment and Hera threw her arms around his dome, pure elation warming her chest. 

Chopper, however, pushed her away, rattling off in his odd form of binary. 

“Whoa, slow down, you what?” Hera asked. Gesticulating like he was talking to a child, Chopper explained how he had discovered the operations command room in the basement, and while he was extracting the data, a hologram of Cham Syndulla negotiated with Commander Slavin for their freedom. 

“We’re being traded?” Sabine piped up, unease thick in her voice. 

Hera couldn’t get over another angle of the story. “My… my father’s actually surrendering?” She blinked that jarring thought out of her mind; she wasn’t about to get distracted from their mission yet again. 

“Can’t have a hostage transfer if there are no hostages,” Sabine spoke up. Hera, however, waved her down.

“No, we’re going through with it. Chopper, find the Imperial armory, raid as many explosives as you can. Let’s make this prisoner exchange interesting.” 

“Please tell me you’re not gonna blow up your own house.”

“This isn’t a home anymore,” Hera said. “It’s an Imperial base.” 

Sabine’s surprise ebbed into a smile. “Well, the armory is going to need a certain level of authorization to even enter, so Chopper’s gonna need this.” She held up Captain Slavin’s code cylinder. Chopper took it from her with a laugh and rolled out of the cellar. 

Stormtroopers came later to lead both women outside in binders. Chopper, in his black and red Imperial paint job, stood off to the side of the clearing, rocking from strut to strut in a far too telling fashion, but knowing he had accomplished his job was a relief for Hera. She was herded next to Captain Slavin where she watched the  _ Ghost _ fly into view, and descend hesitantly. Ezra must’ve been piloting. It landed, the boarding ramp lowered, and Hera couldn’t help the gasp at seeing her father stand there, proud and collected. This wasn’t a tactic or a doublecross. The infamous Cham Syndulla was actually turning himself in. Luckily for him, Hera was the one with the doublecross. 

Kanan and Zeb joined him on the ramp. 

“Come forward alone!” Slavin ordered. Hera heard the sound of blasters simultaneous cocking, all around her. The remaining roving stormtroopers were now the security guards overwatching this transfer. “We’ll make a simultaneous exchange.” Slavin pushed Hera in the back and she staggered forward, Sabine following. A chattering laugh preceded Chopper’s appearance, rolling across the clearing and up the ramp. 

“I’m sorry, father,” Hera said as they met in the middle. 

“Even I’ve been captured before,” he said. 

“No, I’m sorry about the house. Chopper!”

A second later, the ground rumbled from a chain of explosions successively growing more audible until all the doors of the house blasted open with blazing fire. Everyone—stormtroopers, Slavin, even Hera and Sabine—hit the ground from the sheer force of the hot wind. Hera’s ears rang. Shouts from the Imperials pulling themselves to their feet were unintelligible to her. Even Sabine shouting right next to her didn’t translate beyond the note of urgency. Delayed bolts shot around them; the stormtroopers were recovering. Hera ran. With her cuffed hands tangled around Sabine’s arm, she knew Sabine ran with her. The boarding ramp took up her entire field of vision. Her plan had worked. 

She looked back, expecting to see her father on her heels as well, because he was better at adapting to unexpected changes than herself. A flash of black caught her eye—a trooper unlike she’d ever seen—off to the side, by the fallen Y-wing, well out of range of the blast, taking aim. He shot, and as she finally turned enough to see her father in full run, he shuddered. And collapsed. 

Sound still didn’t register around the ringing in her ears. Not her crew’s calls to continue into the ship, not her own shrieking at Cham’s crumpled form on the ground, not the growing blaster bolts screaming around them. The next thing she knew, the boarding ramp closed in her face. She was cut off from the battle, and from her father. 


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more Numa appearance in this chapter.

Time had a funny way of moving. Hera blinked twice after the boarding ramp shut in her face and she found herself sitting on the couch in the main cabin. Figures dashed past. A heaviness wrapped around her. Arms held her. But instead of the familiar interior of the _Ghost,_ Hera only saw the slow replay of her father falling to the ground, pain loud on his face, lekku writhing. Him hitting the ground sounded like the thrusters of a ship engaging.

One shaky breath later and logic kicked in, dousing her in cold detachment. Pushing away from Numa, Hera dropped the blanket and hurried into the cockpit where Ezra sat bent over the steering controls. The horizon weaved.

“How many are following us?” Hera demanded, clutching the back of Ezra’s seat. “And did you scramble our signature?” From the co-pilot’s chair, Kanan punched two controls on the dash.

“We don’t have anyone after us—went right by a Star Destroyer and… nothing. No TIEs, no enemy fire. It’s weird,” said Ezra.

A lump grew in Hera’s throat, equal to the size of the pit in her stomach, and she eased herself into the chair behind him. She hugged her arms. “The Empire might’ve gotten what they wanted here after all.”

Bright orange caught her eye as Numa entered the cockpit and crouched next to Hera. She laid a hand on Hera’s knee and intoned, “We should change back.”

They traded clothes once more in Hera’s cabin, the whole time listening to Chopper, standing outside the door, bragging how he had extracted maps of Imperial assets distributed across the province, as well as timetables and travel schedules from the Imperial’s network. That sparked a smile on Numa’s face, but Hera couldn’t quite feel anything at the moment beyond throbbing numbness.

There was no time for goodbyes when the _Ghost_ touched down to deliver Numa and the intel to the waiting resistance. Once Numa was clear of the boarding ramp, Hera took off, leaving Ryloth behind once more—possibly for the last time.

Chopper stayed in the cockpit with her, volunteering to chart their hyperspace course as Hera veered to avoid the blockade on her path outside of the planetary gravitational pull.

The viewport swept blue, and with their jump lasting several hours, Hera picked herself up and walked to the main room where everyone loitered, silent. As one, they all looked to her; Kanan tilted his mask mostly in her direction. The silence was unbearable with the clear pity radiating from their expressions.

“Hera—” Kanan started.

“I’ll be back to bring us out of hyperspace. Until then, I just want to be alone.” And she walked straight past all of them to close herself in her cabin.

Her legs gave out halfway into her room, and finally the wall that was the logical aspect of her brain failed, releasing all the emotion trapped behind it.

Tears streamed down her face. Her body shook with sobs. All she could do was hug herself to keep her arms from trembling.

For as long as she could remember, her father had been somebody’s enemy—political or separatist or Imperial— and even though their relationship hadn’t been spectacular, she always imagined he’d continue being that cornerstone in her life. Present, enduring, even when she didn’t want to reach out and mend the wound deepened by time and war. His resistance would carry on, but she would never have an opportunity to make things right with him. Their relationship had never even been prominent in her mind—being so strained she would rather forget it entirely—but now that it was too late, it was all she could think about.

The emotions she denied herself came out in body-wracking waves, until that logical sector of her brain returned, and Hera decided there was no point in crying. She shouldn’t mourn the loss of reconciliation when there were people here, now, aboard her very ship, she could reconcile with.

Hera dried her eyes and left her room only to bump into Chopper right outside her door. He was back to his normal orange color. Had she been in her cabin that long?

“Hey, buddy,” she said over his immediate chattering. “Yes, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry, Chop.” He still pressed, following her all the way to the galley where Ezra and Sabine’s conversation puttered out the moment she entered. The glances they cast her way from the table were hesitant, and full of sympathy.

“Where are Kanan and Zeb?” she asked in as neutral a voice as she could force.

“Cabins,” Ezra said.

Hera poured herself a cup of caf—from a pot she didn’t prepare herself, and smiled at the thought that one of her crew took the time to make it.

“I’m sorry about what happened, Hera,” Sabine said as Hera turned back to them.

 _It was entirely my own fault._ The insinuation throbbed in her head, but it would do no good to wallow in self-pity. With Chopper already rolled up to the only spot at the table he would fit, Hera joined the group, sitting on the bench next to Ezra. Both his and Sabine’s expressions betrayed that they didn’t know what to say at all.

“Have you heard of that Grand Admiral before today?” Hera asked Sabine.

“No, and I’ve never heard of a non-human in the Imperial Navy before, either. Considering how the Empire operates, he had to fight for that rank. This… isn’t going to be someone we can take lightly.”

Not that anyone else they’d fought had been a simple victory, either, but their track record had shown that any plan Hera’s crew had thrown together usually worked.

Now, their luck there had seemingly run out.

Hera stared down at her cup, replaying everything that had gone wrong in her head and growing more frustrated with herself as the penalties piled up. If she had just stuck to the mission, she could’ve avoided meeting that Chiss altogether, and… her father…

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Ezra’s voice broke into her thoughts, like another voice of blame. But looking at him, Ezra was completely sincere. It wasn’t that long ago when the entire crew learned of the deaths of Ezra’s parents; come to think of it, Hera couldn’t recall Ezra mentioning them much after the fact.

Hera put a hand on Ezra’s arm and words escaped her.

For once in her life, words escaped her.

She pulled him into a hug instead and, to her complete surprise, he hugged back. Chopper’s little metal arms wrapped around Ezra from the opposite side and Sabine laughed at the spectacle.  

Pulling away from Ezra, Hera saw a contentment on his features. None of that perplexing attitude that had ruffled feathers and gtrated on her over the past couple of months, and just like with Kanan and Sabine, Hera dared to hope that her crew was coming back.

“Well,” Hera said after a heavy silence as her crew continued to look to her, “he wasn’t my only family. I still have you all, and I’m grateful for that every day.”

No matter how far they had drifted.

-0-

The sculptures Thrawn had already collected for his office aboard the _Chimaera_ did little to break up the monotony of drab Imperial gray. Even still nestled in its open carrying case, the Kalikori stood out. Running a finger over its grooves, Thrawn’s mind wandered back to Ryloth and Captain Syndulla. She had tipped him off to the very act of sabotaging her family home, yet he hadn’t expected her to go to such extremes. It was clearly her last option—and one she hadn’t thought all the way through with how it played out—but to be fair, she _had_ been cornered. Thrawn would have to wait to see her in action again before truly judging her competency as a leader.

A beep of an incoming call came from the holorojector. Closing the Kalikori case, Thrawn took a seat at his desk as an image of Colonel Yularen formed.

“Admiral, I appreciated your timely report on Ryloth,” he said. Thrawn had submitted it not a half hour ago. “What was your impression of Captain Slavin?”

“He was an ill fit for such responsibility. He had two rebel hostages as bargaining pieces and would rather trade both for a single resistance member than attempt to return Commander Titus to the Empire.”

“It’s possible Captain Slavin was unaware of the situation in the wider galaxy,” Yularen said.

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed at a description fitting so many of the Imperials he had crossed paths with over his career. “A shortcoming in an officer of the Empire.”

“I assume you have a recommendation?”

“Move him to a position where he cannot continue to be an embarrassment.”

Colonel Yularen allowed himself a dignified chuckle.

“Has any progress been made locating the whereabouts of Commander Titus?” Thrawn asked.

“None yet. But you’ll be the most qualified to find him, considering it was Phoenix Squadron who took him. It’s more imperative than ever to find these rebels and their base of operations.”

“I concur, Colonel. I had written up a report of my own suggestion, which Governor Pryce rejected. However, I foresee this problem will be resolved shortly after the Centares Gala.”

Even through a holographic transmission, Yularen’s expression darkened. His next words came carefully. “I realize the compulsory hierarchy under which you fall, but I wonder if Governor Pryce doesn’t let the power go to her head.”

“She is well within her rights to dismiss any of my proposals,” Thrawn said.

“Granted. All the same, I’d like to hear about this rejected proposal myself.”

-0-

A handful of X-wings dotted Atollon’s landing zone when the _Ghost_ returned. Like Reklam’s Y-wings, they had seen better days, but the fact that they were here taking up space on the pad meant that they presumably worked. Rex and Commander Sato stood next to one of the carbon-scored X-wings, along with two armored Protectors.

“...And with that heads up from General Dodanna, we were able to recover these ships,” Rex reported. He flashed a smile to the _Ghost_ crew as they approached. “Brought in six! Top that!”

“I almost did, remember?” Ezra ribbed back.

“Well done, Captain. Let’s have these fighters cleaned up by tomorrow,” Sato said. He and the Mandalorians returned to base but Rex remained, gesturing to a new, blocky transport shuttle, tucked away behind a wall of crates. With the wear and tear coloring its hull, it certainly wasn’t _brand_ new, but a new face on the landing zone.

“I saw this while I was out, and figured you were still in the market for an auxiliary ship. Let’s hope it fits.”

Sabine, Ezra and Chopper rushed over to check it out. With a laugh, Rex clapped Kanan on the back, saying, “Come on, I’ll describe it to you.”

Hera moved to follow until a heavy hand fell on her shoulder. Zeb stood there, his ears bent low.

“Hera, I’ve taken it upon myself to do some digging, and I’ve been looking over the intel recovered from Tseebo,” he intoned, not much louder than a growl. “There was a report the rebellion labeled as non-priority, of Imperial facilities that studied and tested on non-human species. Lasats were listed as some of the experiments, and one testing location is in the Imperial Complex on Mygeeto.”

Too many responses flooded Hera’s mind, a different reaction to each aspect of his news, but Zeb continued, cutting through her thoughts.

“I’m done asking. My people are an endangered species. I was Captain of the Honor Guard—it’s my duty to help escort any remaining Lasats to Lira San the few times we even hear about them.” He took a steadying breath. “Let me go to Mygeeto, or I’m done with the rebellion.”

Color rose in her cheeks. How information like that could ever be marked non-priority, Hera didn’t know, but back when they first had Tseebo’s data, their squadron was preoccupied with locating a base of operations. Now, despite the piles of tasks, they had a bit more leeway than back then.

One feeble retort came to mind, that Zeb was being too impatient, too demanding. But that thought was immediately chased by the memories of all the times Hera had pushed his requests aside, sidelined his questions, and grounded his missions.

“Yes, of course!” she said, and it was a wonder there was any air left in her lungs. “Let’s talk to Commander Sato about it.”

-0-

A heaviness hung over the debrief which Ezra couldn’t entirely attribute to Hera’s grief. She had a hard time talking, sure, and everyone there could empathize with the shock of losing family. But all the same Ezra eagerly escaped once the meeting was over to the edge of base where it was just him and the open air and the light from the setting sun.

He reached out, trying to initiate that communication which Maul always seemed able to control. Looking for his presence, that cold in-between world.

A hand fell on Ezra’s shoulder. Kanan stood there.

“Let’s take a walk. I want to introduce you to someone.”

Ezra clamped down on the Force bond. “Introduce me to who?”

“A friend.” Kanan took a couple steps to the side, passing through the line of perimeter sensors.

“Uh,” Ezra intoned. “Where are you going?”

“He lives out here.”

“You met someone who lives on a deserted planet?” Ezra croaked. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“I’m not sure anyone would’ve believed me,” said Kanan. “But I need you to trust me on this, Ezra.”

That stirred something in him, an immediate urge to obey. “Then at least take a piece of the sensor with us.”

“We don’t need those,” Kanan said over his shoulder. “That’s one of the things my new friend taught me, that the creatures feed off fear. Don’t be afraid and the kryknas won’t have a reason to attack.”

“None of that sounds right.” But he followed Kanan anyway, his lightsaber hilt in hand.

The Jedi had no problem walking across the landscape as it dipped and trundled. He walked with almost the same gait he had before his injury, casually turning back to say, “Put it away, Ezra. You won’t need it.”

“Kanan, I know you can’t see them, but there are kryknas out here! They haven’t left.”

“I know. I can sense them.”

Ezra ran to catch up with him. “Wait, you can’t connect with them, can you?”

“No, but with some help, I’ve been able to better understand them. And I think you’ll learn that today, too.”

They walked on, Ezra following Kanan across the dry Atollon landscape, wanting to say so much yet never having the courage to start. Ezra couldn’t explain why, but it wasn’t easy talking to Kanan about emotions—not when Kanan was likely to use anything Ezra said as more examples of why it was important to “be mindful of your feelings; they betray you.”

Well after the tall coral formation shading Chopper Base was lost behind the darkening horizon, Kanan stopped at a thick grouping of coral that resembled every holodepiction of forests Ezra had ever seen.

Ezra hoped they weren’t going into that.

“Bendu?” Kanan called out, startling Ezra. “Bendu, are you here?”

No response came. Ezra expected someone to emerge from the forest—at this point a colony of kryknas wouldn’t surprise him—but nothing happened. Yet there was an energy here, as if the very essence of a planet could be concentrated into one spot. Humming; thriving.

The ground shook, first as a mild tremor, then as a quake that rattled the terrain. Part of the coral formation grew in front of them until  a monstrous creature unearthed itself to stand over them, tall as a Lothal rock mound. Ezra saw both a creature and coral as he looked at this thing, with its long face and fur-like beard. And instead of asking Kanan what was happening, all Ezra could do was point and scream inarticulately.

-0-

Sabine had expected for the crew to spend time together after the brief, lean on one another, considering what a terrible day Hera had just had. But once Sato dismissed them, Kanan and Ezra disappeared, Zeb returned to the _Ghost,_ and even now as Sabine looked over her shoulder, Hera remained affixed to the holotable, combing through data.

So Sabine zeroed in on the landing zone where Fenn Rau and one of the Protectors leaned under a Fang fighter. With the carbon scoring streaking its hull, this ship was one of the ones sent out to recover X-wings.  

“I hear they’re sending you out on missions already?” she said.

Rau glanced at her with all the same sourness he wore when he was a prisoner. “One, and only because it was Captain Rex who asked. Your rebellion isn’t keen on letting us leave on our own missions unescorted. They trust us to not shoot them in the back, but that’s it.”

Sabine knew the frustration in his voice. “I was treated the same way before, and I hated it, too. You’ll earn their trust in no time.”

“Is there something you want?” Rau cut in.

“How do you like it here so far?” Sabine asked. She would stay chipper despite his surliness; if she couldn’t talk to her own people, she had no one.

“It’s a decent enough place to stay while we look for a new campsite.”

Sabine’s eyes shot wide. “You just got here, give it time! I had to adjust, too, y’know.”

“I’d rather not give up on my Mandalorian heritage, thanks.”

It would’ve hurt less if Rau had physically punched her in the gut. “I never gave up on my heritage! I may not live with my clan anymore, but I’m still Mandalorian! Get over the Clone War, Rau!”

“How can I, when we’re still directly affected by it?” he quipped. “I want to know when your base’s holotable is free again. We can only search your map database under observation, and as of right now we’re prohibited from setting foot on the Corvette brig to use its holoterminal. How perfectly ironic.”

Balling her fists, Sabine marched off with no particular destination in mind. Halfway to somewhere, Commander Sato caught her eye, and a plan fell into place. 

-0-

“Ezra, this is the Bendu,” Kanan introduced, his words calm. Ezra hardly heard it over all the disparate warnings in his head—from the creature’s coral antlers to its dull white eyes to its massive paws, Ezra couldn’t focus on what scared him the most.

“The Jedi returns. With his student? Perhaps for another exchange?” said the Bendu. His voice was exactly what a mountain would’ve sounded like—old, deep, ground-shaking.

Ezra pulled himself together enough to ask, “Exchange? What’s he talking about?”

“He’s probably referring to the Sith holocron. I left it with him after my last visit with him,” Kanan said.

“You left something you said is dangerous with… with _him?”_ Ezra blurted. This creature radiated undeniable power, and all Ezra could imagine was _this_ was what standing in the presence of a small sun would feel like. Giving something like this a Sith artifact was a terrible idea.

“I have seen and remember eons, little Jedi,” the Bendu rumbled. The milky shine of his eyes made Ezra wonder if the Bendu was blind as it turned its gaze to Ezra. “I am above the pull of light and dark that you are caught between.”

Kanan, mask and all, pointed straight to Ezra. “Is that so?” His tone was flat; disappointed. “So you were employing what that holocron taught you on Ryloth? I thought I told you to stick to what you learned from me.”

“You told me to stick to form three while we were sparring that one time. Because you didn’t like losing,” Ezra pointed out.

“This isn’t about winning or losing!” huffed Kanan. “This is about Sith knowledge being dangerous—it’ll consume you. Remember Fort Anaxes?”

Ezra couldn’t help feeling like Kanan didn’t have the full perspective. Tapping into the dark side as a Jedi consumed too much energy, leaving him weak, drained, fainting. But tapping into the dark side while allowing his emotions to fuel him was what had made Ezra’s recent missions so successful against the Empire.

But Ezra also couldn’t say any of that, because Kanan would have a fit at Ezra giving in to the dark side.

“Tell him, Bendu!” Kanan called up to the mountain of a creature. “Tell Ezra how treacherous it is to learn from the Sith holocron.”

“My perspective is neither Jedi nor Sith. It is purely the middle. The holocron held no secrets that I did not already know; but the way they share them is unique to the Sith, as I’m sure the Jedi are unique in their own portrayal of their equally limited understanding of the Force.”

“Hey, the Jedi Masters of my day were powerful!” Kanan retorted.

“And their legacy—you and your student—are nothing but raging internal conflicts. You see disparity in the Force as something to _fight,_ and thus you will never know peace. And thus _I_ will never know peace because your combined presence is so loud on my world.”

An unease crept along Ezra’s spine, like whenever he had come up against a krykna—an untameable creature with unpredictable intent. With one thick hand, the Bendu could remove Ezra and Kanan from his world if he wanted to. And it was impossible to tell if he wanted to. All the same, Ezra backed up a pace.

“I think there’s value in learning your approach,” Kanan said. “After all, you had a better understanding about the kryknas.”

All the injustice, the condemnation of the dark side, the feeling of abandonment he’d shouldered for half a year, and now the hypocrisy of Kanan willfully casting aside the Jedi to learn the Force from a stranger, all bubbled into words before Ezra could filter them. “Are you serious?!” His voice echoed farther across the nighttime landscape. “You don’t even know what this thing is but apparently he’s good enough to learn the Force from just because you decide what’s the appropriate way to learn the Force! I actually saved us on Ryloth, but you yell at me whenever I stray from the Jedi teaching. Why is what I choose to do always wrong, but you can change training at any time?”

“Ezra, your attitude is out of control!” shouted Kanan.

“It’s always control with you—you need to be in control of everything! Of how I talk to you, of how I train, of who I learn from. You know, I don’t know why I wanted you back in the first place. Anymore, I wish you’d stayed gone, Kanan!”

Ezra turned to stomp back toward Chopper Base, chased only by the rolling laughter of the Bendu.

-0-

Transportation logistics had to be plotted to Yavin, to supply them with the ships Rex had acquired. Commander Titus still needed to be interrogated again, by someone who had the benefit of being born a human. In the back of Hera’s mind, the _Ghost_ ’s maintenance and upcoming fuel runs and pilot training all jostled for attention, yet Hera bent over Chopper Base’s holotable, fuming at the half a page of information to stare back at her. This wasn’t just the information Phoenix Squadron had scraped together over the years—it was the sum of all the intel their entire rebel network had accumulated—yet when she searched for any clues on Grand Admiral Thrawn, all that returned was half a page.

More personal information was listed on Hera’s Imperial wanted poster than was in the rebels’ databank about Thrawn!

Only a single campaign was attached to his name, one where he cleared rebels out of a planet called Batonn; other than that, sketchy dates estimated his assumption of all his different ranks, prefaced by an unsourced account of how quickly he’d graduated from the Academy on Coruscant.

They had nothing to go on.

Hera leaned on her hands and let her head roll in attempt to dull the headache she knew was forming, the way the base of her lekku throbbed.

“You’re still here?” Kanan asked, approaching the holotable.

Hera rubbed her eyes. “Has it been that long?”

“I left with Ezra a couple hours ago and you were in that exact same spot. I know you like to throw yourself into more work when you’re stressed, but you also need time to process what’s happened.”

“What’s happened is we were blindsided by the Empire, Kanan,” Hera sighed. “I need to be prepared. As prepared as that Grand Admiral was.”

“Blindsided isn’t a good feeling, no,” he said with a rueful grin.

Hera winced. Remembering he was blind was an occurrence she tripped over whenever he wore that green mask. The way he moved, the way he still angled his head in the direction of people, seemed like he wasn’t injured at all. It broke her heart all over again with each time, because how could she keep forgetting? After half a year, why was the idea not locked into her brain?

“But really,” Kanan continued, pulling Hera out of her thoughts, “let me help. The only reason I was on the Ryloth mission was because I volunteered myself. I can do more than you think I can.”

And with as hard pressed as the cell was lately, Hera couldn’t afford to be selective with her crew. She had to rely on all of them.

“Okay,” she conceded. “When I have time, we should sit down and you can detail exactly what you can do now that things have changed. But not right now.”

“Well, I hope soon. Because to me, we feel only a little closer than strangers anymore.”

Funny, Hera had gotten that feeling not even a week past Malachor, when Kanan shut all of them out. Was he only sensing this now?

“Tomorrow, then. I think we’ve all had enough excitement for one day.”

-0-

Thrawn had ample time on his return trip to Lothal to read over the progress reports forwarded to him during his absence. TIE Defender production was now underway, but an unusual number of troops were being diverted away from Lothal City for an unknown project, and not even his authorization codes as Grand Admiral of the Seventh Fleet gave him access to the secure records. His final task before stepping foot on planet was to send a request to Governor Pryce to see her at her earliest convenience.

She entered his office as he withdrew the Kalkiori from its traveling case.

“Welcome back, Admiral,” she greeted, voice tight. “I trust Ryloth has been dealt with to the Empire’s satisfaction?”

“Naturally.” He activated the anti-grav settings on one of the empty pedestals along the wall, opposite from the graffitied duracrete barrier, and set the Kalikori atop it to stand suspended as an art piece on display. “But I called on you to ask what this new project on Lothal is that redirects personnel within the City to a classified location. I assumed I was to be kept notified of all Imperial developments here.” He returned to the center of the room, where his desk separated him from the governor.

“Well, this isn’t exactly a military matter, you see,” Pryce said. Suddenly she beamed, as if happy that for once Thrawn was in the dark. “The Emperor personally commissioned this; it is entirely civilian run and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the military.”

“Then the civilians can contract their own security, and I will recall all Imperial troops that have been diverted to this task.”

“No, Admiral, I am following the Emperor’s demands _to the letter._ Nobody within the Seventh Fleet is being tasked out; these are all coming from Lothal garrison troops. If you have a problem with this, take it up with the Emperor. But those soldiers are needed for his enterprise and we still have ample security in Lothal City and the Complex.”

Another mystery surrounding the Emperor, this one much smaller in scope than the Death Star, but still frustratingly out of reach for Thrawn. His brows lowered with his souring mood.

“See that it does not detract from containing the rebel threat,” Thrawn said shortly. He knew, of course, that he should not let this control his reaction, but such undercutting pettiness exemplified at all echelons of the Empire had always eaten at him. It was as if all officers and politicians had agreed to let pride win over logic, no matter the outcome.

The way Pryce smiled, she seemed to know she’d gotten under Thrawn’s skin. “I’ll leave you to your work then, Admiral.”

The door closed behind her, as Thrawn’s mind sunk into the mystery of the Emperor’s new plan—surely it couldn’t rival a Death Star. But then again, if the Emperor solely relied on a single weapon station to dominate the galaxy, Thrawn would have had to reconsider his initial appraisal of the man’s intelligence. But what could Lothal offer that necessitated such secrecy? The planet’s most productive mines were not only under the Empire’s control, but owned by Pryce’s family, and other than the doonium it exported, Lothal did not have anything else to offer the galaxy—Thrawn had already investigated.

Pryce seemed to think that by keeping Thrawn in the dark, he could more freely concentrate on his own task to find the rebel network, but really she was only constricting him by withholding information, no matter how apparently unrelated. The person with the clearest understanding of the moving pieces on any game board would most easily dominate the game.

Then again, perhaps that was precisely why the Emperor didn’t want anyone beyond himself knowing all the other pieces.

Despite the frustrated thoughts circling Thrawn’s mind, the Kalikori caught his eyes. He could save the Emperor’s scheme for another day; dwelling on unfounded speculation would get him nowhere. Instead, he turned back to what he was well versed on, and let the pictures from Phoenix’s files repopulate the room.

He instinctively drew to the one of Hera Syndulla, taken when the rebels had infiltrated Grand Moff Tarkin’s Star Destroyer. Now after meeting her in person, Thrawn conceded none of her likenesses did her justice. The way the heat had flared across her skin in fear and fury at him. Her spirit. Her beliefs.

Thrawn circled the room, looking at the Mandalorian and the Lasat in turn, followed by the Jedi—who were _both_ alive, the troops on Ryloth had confirmed that. Thrawn didn’t make a habit of conjecturing wildly, but there was something, some nagging feeling, that the Emperor’s new initiative and the Phoenix cell weren’t unrelated. Exploiting that connection would be a noteworthy achievement, if only to him.

-0-

_She’s in the third story hallway back in her home on Ryloth, but it’s different. The lights flicker and die. The darkness clogs the air, constricting Hera. The far end of the corridor illuminates and there stands a figure in white—Thrawn. The lights die again but that uniform of his remains. Glowing white. With glowing red eyes above it. Hands behind his back, he advances. Hera runs. She runs away and the corridor just keeps stretching, on and on. Yet she can’t outrun his slow, deliberate footsteps._

_She hits a wall—the end of the corridor. There’s nowhere she can go. Turning, he’s right there. Towering over her. His arms reach out to corner her. He traps her against the wall as the hallway falls victim to a chain of explosions. Engulfing them both._

Hera woke with a start, skin drenched and chest heaving. She sat halfway up in her own bunk, safely aboard the _Ghost._ The darkness wasn’t suffocating anymore.

The chrono next to her bunk showed the day shift wouldn’t even start for another hour, and considering she had stayed up working well into the night shift, no one would expect her anytime soon. She scaled out of her bunk, her mind too foggy to properly convert galactic time but somehow knowing it would be fine to patch a transmission through to Ryloth. So she plugged a familiar frequency into her cabin’s personal communications transceiver. A waiting beep sounded, then another. Then an additional three, and with each one, Hera’s heart sank a little more.

But then a connecting _click_ followed, and a holographic bust of Numa took shape over Hera’s workdesk.

“I was getting worried for a second!” breathed Hera, eyes already stinging. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

“Okay is subjective,” Numa said. Everything about her face looked hard, almost accusatory. “The Empire is still looking for us, but at least the intel you got us is helping us stay one step ahead of them.”

“So the resistance is in a pretty bad shape?”

“All we can do right now is hide. We don’t have the time or the numbers to orchestrate any kind of counterattack yet. Gobi’s taken over as leader, but he’s no Cham.”

A wave of emotion that Hera wasn’t expecting to feel washed over her, squeezing her heart and giving a passing quiver to her bottom lip. It had to be lingering effects from her nightmare.

“If you need assistance—more supplies, more intel, anything—don’t hesitate to reach out. The rebellion will help in any way we can.”

Numa’s features didn’t soften in the slightest. “It might be better if you deal with the Empire in your own system for now.” She looked away, at something happening on her own side of the transmission. “We’re packing up to move locations again. I have to go.”

“Right. Stay safe, Numa.” The hologram disappeared, and the workdesk grew dangerously blurry in the dimness of the standby lights.

All of this, because of her family’s Kalikori.

-0-

Ezra stood at the line of perimeter sensors far too early in the morning—or as he hadn’t slept yet, far too late at night. Light had only just warmed the horizon, flinging jagged shadows across the landscape, including Ezra’s. It was so unlike Lothal’s rolling plains and sturdy rock formations, yet his home was all he could think about. It resonated in his mind, stirring his homesickness, stoking his feelings of impending dread. Tuggeing at him. The longer the rebellion waited, the worse Lothal would grow; he had to return home and—

“I sense conflict within you,” Maul said.

Ezra sighed, “Yeah, me too.” Next to him, Maul stood like an abnormal holoprojection, failing to cast a shadow though he appeared solid on Atollon.

“Where does this confusion stem from?”

“The Force? The rebellion? Lothal? I have to go home. We were supposed to—with the Y-wings—but the rebellion’s just dropped any mission to my homeworld completely. It… it needs me.”

“Don’t let your emotions cloud your mind.”

Ezra blinked, and what would’ve been a glare was tempered only by confusion as he looked at Maul. “That sounds pretty Jedi-like.”

“Harnessing your emotions as strength is one thing; wallowing in self-pity serves no purpose.”

“I gave into my emotions so I could fight an enemy on Concord Dawn,” Ezra admitted. “And after they were all dead, I wanted to keep killing. That’s never happened before.”

“Giving in means letting your emotions fuel you, not to let them run away with you. When I was younger, my master trained me to remain in a constant, emotionally agitated state. He told me I would be stronger that way, and it did add to my strength. But I see now that he was keeping me feral to better control me; so I wouldn’t overpower and turn on him.” Maul looked straight at Ezra. “I would not pass along that teaching to you.”

Ezra watched the shadows lengthen in the light of a new dawn. A weight fell on his shoulder—Maul’s hand.

“Have you located the holocron?”

Ezra’s focus, however, zipped to their connection—their physical connection—confusion tumbling over surprise, and his mouth just dangling in the middle. “How… how are you doing that?”

“Our bond grows, apprentice. Now, what of the holocron?”

“Kanan gave it to the Bendu.” Ezra could feel the frustration from Maul just as easily as he could feel his hand.

“The what.”

“Some kind of giant animal that lives here. He can use the Force.”

“So this Bendu uses the Sith holocron?”

“No, he just… has it.”

“Then he won’t mind you taking it back, because the more time we waste, the further the Sith slip from our grasp.”

Darth Vader’s appearance on Malachor still haunted Ezra in every tall shadow and every dark figure in his peripheral vision. He doubted with all his improvement that he’d be much of a match for Vader, even now. The inquisitors that had hunted them relentlessly had disappeared, but while they were around, Ezra had needed Kanan with him to fight them off.

Ezra could barely admit it to himself, but he wasn’t prepared to take on the Sith. Of course the kind of weapon Maul hunted to defeat the Sith would certainly help, but it felt too implausible to be tangible. What Ezra _did_ know was that stormtroopers and Imperial weapons were no match for him. He could single-handedly overwhelm a squadron of troopers, and that was the kind of power Lothal needed right now.

He gave a half-hearted promise to reclaim the holocron, and their Force bond didn’t hold out much longer with as tired as Ezra was. He dragged himself back to the _Ghost_ now that the sun had crossed the horizon, and stopped short in the doorway to the galley at the sight of Hera sitting at the table, staring into her cup of caf. Dark green circles skirted her eyes, and Ezra didn’t have to ask her why.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“Couldn’t sleep. What’s your excuse?”

‘Didn’t sleep at all’ might not go over well. “Same here.” He poured himself a cup of water and sat at the table, not quite across from Hera.

“I wanted to let you know it’s good to see you training with Kanan again.” Hera’s expression was so truthful; she radiated a need to hang onto something that gave her hope, and Ezra let her have this one thing. After all, he still remembered how it felt when he discovered the death of his own parents.

“Yeah, he’s finding his feet again as a teacher, I guess.”

“I’m glad. You two need each other. The time apart after Malachor really made that apparent.”

Clearly, Hera knew a whole other side of Kanan that Ezra never had access to, because Kanan just seemed disappointed and frustrated more often than not. It was only time until Hera heard from Kanan what happened last night, but for right now, it was nice to have Hera react to him with an expression other than critical.

-0-

Back when Hera started opening up more about the rebellion and Fulcrum—not much, but enough to show Sabine that she was trying to alleviate the girl’s trust issues—she shared with Sabine something Fulcrum had said: “the more you know, the less you fear.” It was why the Spectres depended so much on intel before initiating a mission, and why they traded so much for comparatively little intel. And it was exactly what they lacked when it came to Thrawn.

Perhaps the more information Sabine could acquire, the less distracted Hera would act. She certainly hadn’t admitted it, but seeing Hera practically compromised on Ryloth had scared her.

Sabine entered the galley to find Hera and Ezra sitting at the table. Their conversation dropped like a dead rancor, and they watched as she found the cupboard closest to the door.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, grabbing a handful of ration bars.

“Morning. What are you doing up?” Hera asked.

“Talked to Sato last night and he gave me permission to talk to Titus. We’ll see what I can get out of him,” Sabine said, stowing her breakfast in her upturned helmet.

Hera’s expression snapped to one of interest. “What’s your angle?”

“Considering you had no luck with him because of his prejudice, there’s no way Titus can be happy about a non-human like Thrawn holding a higher rank than he ever achieved. Layer and repeat.”

“Sounds good,” Hera said with what Sabine would classify as a smile of relief.

Sabine took the new shuttle, dubbed the _Phantom II_ —still sitting out on the landing zone as Sabine didn’t want it docked with the _Ghost_ until she could paint it—to the CR90 Corvette orbiting Atollon. Now that Fenn Rau was no longer held here, Sabine hadn’t had a reason to visit in over a week.

The guard on duty let her into Titus’ cell with his datacard, and the lights automatically flickered on at her entrance. Commander Titus winced and sat up.

“Why are you waking me up?” he demanded. If he was attempting a glare, it wasn’t coming out through his pudgy squinting. She took a seat on the bare slab across from him.

“Why not? The Empire isn’t coming for you, so you’re on our schedule.” Sabine could read the disdain on his face as he looked at her armor.

“Then at least send someone of equal rank to barge in here.”

“They don’t wanna talk to you, that’s the thing. But I’m here. Name’s Sabine, and we’re going to have a very interesting conversation today.”

“About what, Mandalorian?”

“Ran into a friend of yours, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Doing well for himself. Didn’t mention you, but seeing as how you _used_ to be an Admiral, I’m sure you know each other.”

Titus blinked and rubbed his eyes. “… _Grand_ Admiral?” Perhaps he was weighing if this was some sort of dream still.

“Didn’t you hear? He probably advanced in rank after you were demoted all the way back to Commander. That’s gotta be embarrassing.”

Another squinty-eyed glare.

“What _is_ he, anyway?” she asked.

“He’s ruining the integrity of the Imperial Navy, that’s what!” snapped Titus. “Some of us work hard to get into the Academy and graduate with enough marks to be given an assignment on a Star Destroyer, and he comes through on someone’s word that the Emperor sent him, so he gets everything handed to him because now we all just accept the word of some alien? The Empire’s just tripping over itself to look more diverse and Thrawn made it to an officer’s rank and he’s showered in rewards he didn’t earn.”

In the back of Sabine’s mind, she was gawking at how different it was talking to Rau when he was imprisoned compared to Titus. This was going to be exceptionally easier than she first thought.

“Thrawn?” she spoke up before Titus caught a second wind. “Got to be a Grand Admiral. Because the Empire wanted to diversify.” She meant to clarify but her incredulity couldn’t form her thoughts into questions.

“Precisely,” Titus said with a self-important nod.

“Well, it sounds like neither of us want to see him succeed.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get any help from me. Rebels claiming I aided them against the Empire? My name would be ruined.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I was an Imperial cadet once upon a time—I know the ropes. You’d be hailed as the guy who maneuvered Thrawn out of the picture. Out of all the officers you know, how many really want a nonhuman as a decorated _Grand_ Admiral in the Navy?”

Titus’ gaze turned squinty once more as he looked at her. “A Mandalorian attending an Imperial Academy?” A gasp whistled through his teeth. “Wait, are _you_ the one who created the arc pulse generator?”

Sabine’s stomach plummeted all the way to Atollon. She could hear her own heartbeat in the sudden silence of the room. “How do you know about that?” Her own voice sounded hollow.

“I had a mission to Mandalore while admiral of my Interdictor, and I saw the replica for myself. The engineers made a great fuss over how a cadet who deserted had originally built it, and they talked of integrating the weapon in some form into future ships. Once the engineers learn how to modify it, your generator will be a terror of a weapon!”

The room grew cold. Sabine had destroyed The Duchess before she fled the Academy, along with her schematics—there was no way it could’ve been recreated, she made sure of it! But there was also no way for Titus to know about it if it had been really destroyed.

Sabine could feel it all the way in her throat; she was going to be sick.

“You know,” Titus went on, “for someone who’s given the Empire so much, I can tell you this: you can find Thrawn at the Centares Gala. He hasn’t missed an opportunity to be seen among high society yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're enjoying the fic thus far. I'm taking off for the holidays and will resume posting in January.


	6. Chapter 5

As Sabine piloted the _Phantom II_ onto Atollon’s landing pad, she replayed her conversation with Titus for the fourth time in her mind, jumbling the dialogue, inserting the laughter that chased her from his cell into all the wrong places, and always coming back to her terrible, stupid weapon. He knew about the Duchess. He couldn’t be lying about seeing it—because how else could he have dreamt up its existence? But Sabine never wished for an Imperial to be lying more in her life than right now.  

Her stomach felt like it was dragging along the ground as Sabine approached Atollon’s holoterminal where the leadership stood. The conversation among Commander Sato, Captain Rex and Hera dropped at Sabine’s arrival.

“How went the interrogation?” Sato asked. The adults looked at her expectantly.

“He said he thinks Thrawn will show up at the Centares Gala. It’s happening by the end of the week, so if we want to crash it, we gotta be quick.”

Rex cleared the holotable of its lines of data and pulled up any information on Centares. A translucent planet soon hung in the air, information text scrolling underneath.

“Did he give you a date and time?” Hera asked.

“He was surprisingly specific,” Sabine said. At Sato’s suspicious glance, she added, “Titus is under the assumption that if we go to this gala, we’ll embarrass Thrawn in front of all his colleagues, and on those petty grounds, Titus is cooperating.”

That was enough assurance for the leaders.

“Did he give us anything else?” asked Sato.

Everything about her weapon stopped at the tip of her tongue. She wanted so much to share her fears with people who could do something about it—follow up on this information—but what if Titus was lying? It would be a waste of time and resources.

And then everyone would know what she had done.

So, mouth closed, Sabine shook her head. Centares was enough. She was free to leave Phoenix Squadron’s leadership with shining opinions of her.

Walking across the landing pad, her feet felt like duracrete. Between the parked X-wings and the Fang fighters, she could just see the tent the Protectors had erected since they refused to share bunk space with the rebels.

Sabine, for a moment, thought she had the courage to walk in there and tell Rau what Titus had said. Tell him what might be happening on Mandalore. The kind of tyranny that could be unleashed. But her feet stayed planted where they were.

Zeb walked by with a datapad. “Comin’ with us today?” he asked.

“Where?”

“Bustin’ into the Imperial Complex on Mygeeto.” He waved the datapad. “Just got the trip authorization filled out for the mission. Could use your help.”

Her ears burned. An Imperial Complex would certainly have _some_ kind of corroborating intel about any reconstruction of her arc pulse generator—hard evidence. “Yeah, count me in.”

-0-

Kanan wasn’t hard to find, kneeling on the dusty ground on the far side of the landing pad. It would’ve been identical to when Hera found him prior to the Reklam mission, except this time he was several paces outside of the perimeter sensors.

Hera scanned the vicinity for threats as she walked out to meet him, but at least for now no kryknas were visible.

“So, you’re back here… what’s going on?” she asked, kneeling next to him. Kanan sucked in a breath, as if startled from whatever plane he had sunken to.

“I needed more time to meditate. Away from everyone else,” he said.

“Well, Zeb was looking for you earlier, to see if you wanted to come with us to Mygeeto. We’re following up on a report of Lasats.”

Kanan tilted his head, and was quiet for far longer than Hera thought necessary to decide on a mission. “I’ll… sit this one out. Take Ezra, though.”

Pieces fell into place all at once, of Kanan’s distance on the trip back from Ryloth, of him leaving with Ezra upon reaching Atollon but returning alone, of Ezra’s hesitance when Hera talked to him early that morning. And all Hera could feel was her heart sinking again.

“Did something happen between you two?”

“I’m still trying to find a way to deal with his attitude,” huffed Kanan.

“To me it looks like you were already getting through to him.”

“Maybe not.” He failed to elaborate, despite how badly Hera wished he would. But by now she knew him well enough to know when not to press. Kanan turned toward her before she could say anything. “Here I thought you’d come to have that discussion about the extent of my abilities, like you said we would.”

Hera, face scrunched, allowed herself a sigh. She _had_ said that, despite even now only barely being able to snag that memory from the other side of rebellion tasks and nightmares.

“Right. Okay, go ahead.”

“What, just list my qualifications? Like I’m applying for a job?”

“I mean, technically…”

Just like that, his earlier seriousness evaporated and Kanan was that youthful spirit she knew years ago, a lopsided smile under his green mask. It had only been half a year, but already Hera was starting to forget what he looked like before. Just like his full beard, his mask was so much a part of him anymore that with all the work exhaustion, Hera could convince herself he’d always had that.

“Luckily for you, the first thing a Jedi learns is how to sense without sight.”

“Is that how you walk so well?” Hera asked. No matter how carefully she tried to phrase her words, there was no way to come out and say what she wanted without sounding condescending.

“Of course I walk _well,_ it’s not really something you forget…”

It took Hera an embarrassingly long stretch of silence to realize he was joking, and by that time all she could manage was a tired wheeze.

“But what you’re really asking is difficult to explain. People—living things—are easy to sense, the stronger in the Force they are, the brighter and more distinctly they appear. I can _see_ Ezra as clearly as I see you right now, even though he’s in his cabin. Everything else, walls, crates, Chopper, I find by feeling in the Force. It’s like I’ve got a bubble around me, and everything inside that is what I see. I can focus that radar in a certain direction to see further that way, or expand my radius if I really want to concentrate.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Hera said, jaw hanging. A jarring difference from sight alone.

Kanan tried to laugh, but it soured. “At first it was. But the Jedi trained me well, and I’ve had months of practice to be mission ready.” He finished with a smile, as if trying to convince her.

He sounded just as capable as before, if not more so, but Hera couldn’t help mourning what he had lost. “So what do we look like to you now?”

“Buckle in,” Kanan said with a theatrical breath. “If I’m not focusing on anyone, they’re like wisps, or fuzzy light. I know they’re there, I can track their movement, but they feel very periphery. Talking to you, though, right now—I can see your face and lekku the clearest. It’s part of you, and the Force makes up every living thing. Clothes and gear are vaguer but if I wanted to expend the energy I could make those out as clearly. But also emotions are much more prominent and more incorporated with each person I look at. Before, emotions felt like something people _had,_ but now, they feel like you. Part of you, just as much as your lekku. I can’t see you without seeing them, too.”

Immediately, Hera shoved her apprehension deeper, rather trying to radiate full confidence in Kanan.

“Yeah,” he said. “I see that.”

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” Hera said carefully, “but with everything you’ve said, you don’t sound… disabled.” Kanan was quiet for a long moment, all the while Hera felt worse about having said anything.

“It’s a new normal. If your standard for comparison is perfect eyesight, then yes, I’m limited. I could see farther than I can sense. Maybe one day I can work up to sensing far enough ahead of me to fly the _Ghost,_ but right now that’s too taxing. I can’t see colors like I used to. The light wisps have colors, sure, but not correlated to skin or hair color. But sensing everyone around me now, it brings a heightened awareness. A new mindfulness. And… strange to say, I guess I feel more responsible for the people around me, now that they’re constantly on my radar.”

Hera could only sit wearing a sympathetic expression, trying to grasp his reality. But he had come to terms with it and that was really all that mattered.

“So what you’re saying is: Sabine should be my new full-time co-pilot.”

Kanan laughed all the way to an abrupt stop. He faced Hera in what she could only consider a wistful expression. “I won't be able to tell the next time Sabine changes her hair again.”

That feeling of mourning returned, a pulling ache in Hera’s chest. “She already did.”

-0-

Thrawn’s diversion to Ryloth lasted half a Coruscanti week, yet the list of reports he had waiting for him upon his return to Lothal took up three screen lengths on his datapad. Buried among rebel sightings at different places in the Outer Rim was news from Teralov—the command cruiser Thrawn dispatched to guard the planet had been destroyed by none other than the _Ghost_. A following report mentioned that Admiral Konstantine ordered a Star Destroyer to the planet in Thrawn’s absence, but Thrawn knew that was a waste of a perfectly good ship. The rebels had accomplished their mission; they wouldn’t be returning to Teralov anytime soon.

No, to catch the rebels, the Empire would have to expend their resources elsewhere. The rebels would likely be looking for new hyperspace lanes now that their Mandalorian lane had been found out. They would also be looking for ships, with as often as their own ships were destroyed. It stood to reason that they would need more recruits to replace lost pilots, too.

Thrawn projected a map of the galaxy over his desk, webbed with hyperspace lanes both Imperial and corporately held. Yet his gaze drifted right through the map to the Kalikori displayed on the opposite wall, its colors still discernible through the holographic tint. Whatever thoughts of Hera Syndulla it could’ve spurred were interrupted by a beeping from his datapad.

A new message from Governor Pryce.

_Grand Admiral,_

_I’ve taken it upon myself to ensure the completion of our first TIE Defenders before the end of this week, as the Centares Gala is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate them in front of so many high ranking Imperials. In addition, we will need to bring blueprints of all its developmental stages. Several senators have hinted that they are interested in pursuing trade deals with Lothal, including converting their factories into TIE/D producers of their own, if they’re convinced by your demonstration._

_-Arihnda Pryce, Governor_

Thrawn’s brow creased between his ridges. A warning beyond only a handful of days would’ve been preferable. Thrawn had not even been to the factory in person to check on the TIE Defender production since his return. If there was to be a working demonstration at Centares, that meant numerous tests here on Lothal, first. Beyond that, the fact that Pryce had discussed his TIE project with politicians when the production of TIE/Ds was a military decision left a bad taste in his mouth. The Governor was stepping far outside her lane.

A new report populated in the datapad list as Thrawn swiped away Pryce’s note. This one, bare bones as all intel reports were, came from the ISB, mentioned that in the Lothal factory two AT-DP walkers had malfunctioned straight off the assembly line, as well as three speeder bikes, all in the span of a month.

“And this is the first I’ve heard of it?” Thrawn asked his empty office.

The rebels were up to something, but this was too hands-off for Phoenix Squadron. Still, Thrawn would look into this himself.

-0-

Having finally gone to bed once the sun was fully up, Ezra didn’t know how long he slept. But he woke to the floor of his cabin thrumming with an engine at lightspeed. He scrambled out of his room to find everyone in the dark main cabin, illuminated solely by the dejarik table flickering with a hologram city. Chopper still wore his Imperial colors from Ryloth; Kanan was missing entirely.

Ezra stared at the crew as they stared back. “Wha…”

“Finally up, eh?” asked Zeb. “Well, y’haven’t missed much. Join in.”

“Nobody asked if I wanted to come along on this mission? Maybe I had something to do back on Atollon.”

“Kanan wanted you to come,” Hera said, calmly yet decisively, as if that should’ve been the last word.

Ezra’s hands balled into fists. “Kanan, who’s not here? That figures.” Hera’s brows slanted, a precursor to whatever she was about to say, but Ezra turned on his heel and stomped back toward the corridor.

“I’m briefing the mission, here!” Zeb called after him.

“Fill me in later,” grumbled Ezra.

Halfway to his room, a large hand gripped his arm and yanked him all the way around. Zeb towered over Ezra, the hallway lights highlighting him in the fiercest possible way. Ezra hadn’t even heard him approach.

“Listen here,” he growled, “I don’t care if Kanan lets you get away with this attitude—this is a mission to help my people. I won’t have you screwin’ it up because you feel like being angsty today. When the rebellion greenlights Lothal, you know I’ll be on that mission with you. So right now, I need you to be here for me. Otherwise I’ll lock you in the _Phantom II_ without a second thought.”

Ezra could only blink. With as easygoing and downright juvenile as Zeb acted more often than not, Ezra easily forgot that Zeb had been a warrior before the Empire—an elite warrior. This must’ve been a flash of his former life. And the last thing Ezra wanted to do was piss this Zeb off.

Ezra took a long enough pause to swallow, knowing any argument on his part would sound childish and defensive. “The _Phantom II_ is finally docked?”

“Yeah, fits perfectly.” And just like that, Zeb’s indignation and warrior fierceness were gone like a puff of smoke. He nodded back toward the main cabin. “Mission brief?”

“Yeah, okay.” Returning with Zeb, Ezra felt very much like a loth-cat with its tail between its skinny legs, but Sabine and Hera said nothing about his outburst. Chopper beeped in an “oh, look who’s back” sort of way, but Hera smacked him upside his dome.

Zeb settled himself back on the couch. “So, like I was saying, this information is a few months old, but since it’s in the Imperial Complex, they’re sure to have kept records if we come up empty-handed. Chopper’ll have the best access to that.”

“Yavin has a list of specific information they want retrieved,” Hera spoke up. “It’s what convinced them to approve this mission so quickly.”

“Didn’t realize Yavin had so much of a say in Phoenix’s activities,” Zeb muttered, his fur bristling in the dark apparent even to Ezra. “Fine. Hopefully we won’t come up empty-handed, then.”

“I’ll help him out, if we find a safe enough terminal,” Sabine volunteered. Ezra only now noticed that she wasn’t wearing any of her armor.

On the dejarik board’s map, Zeb traced the quickest path from the public spaceport to the Imperial Complex, flinging out a plan so detail-less that it shouldn’t have worked; but it was the same as all their other plans: disguise, infiltrate, don’t get caught.

From the oddly-shaped buildings in the hologram, Ezra made sure he was present in the cockpit to see them first hand as the _Ghost_ descended towards the spaceport. They were shaped like trees the way they tapered toward their tops, grouped together in dense clusters like forests, taller than even Lothal’s rock mounds or Atollon’s coral formations. The planet’s crust jutted like cracked ice, as if each city had been plunked down fully formed onto the surface and the rocky ground splintered upward under the weight of them, creating both a protective wall around the cities and a barrier for anyone attempting to leave. The sight was grander than anything Ezra had seen in his travels, and his jaw hung free during the _Ghost_ ’s descent into its assigned spaceport bay.

Zeb was waiting in the cargo bay by the time everyone else grouped up.

“Everyone good on the plan? I guess the sticking point is finding a pair of binders before we get there, because it’s not assured the storm—”

With a laugh, Chopper lifted binders in one of his metal claws, rattling them.

“Do I want to know where you got those?” mumbled Zeb.

“He got them from me,” said Hera, hands on her hips. “And I got them for whenever a moment arose where I needed them. Fortunate.”

Zeb’s worried expression remained firmly in place. “Right. Well, let’s catch ourselves some volunteers.”

The city—New Jygat—boasted as varied a crowd as Ezra had seen on Garel. Muun, Humans, and other regular Outer Rim species like Rodians, Aqualish, and Devaronians packed the streets.

Ezra’s first step outside of the spaceport had him shivering. He saw his own breath and for a second he expected to see Maul next, but no, it was just that cold here. He rubbed his hands together and fell in behind Zeb as the Lasat strode purposefully down the street.

Aside from some of the advertising boards flashing Imperial messages between product placements, this world didn’t feel broken and miserable like Lothal did. Maybe the Imperial presence wasn’t as heavy here—

“There,” said Zeb, pointing to the glint of white plastoid across the street. Ezra stood on his tip toes just to see above the heads of the crowd flowing around them. A pair of stormtroopers weaved in and out and around people just as deftly as the locals.

It wasn’t hard to grab the troopers as they passed one of the many alleys between the odd buildings, and leave them there while Ezra and Sabine donned their armor. They locked Zeb’s wrists in the binders, and his bo-rifle ended up slung over Sabine’s back. The three of them walked back into the streets, two stormtroopers flanking their prisoner.

It wasn’t long before the Imperial Complex bloomed into view, inserted where there was space for it among the buildings, a gray blot clashing against a forest of architecture. The closer they got, the more Imperials they passed, heading out on their own patrols or staging vehicles, none bothering them aside from those who felt like laughing at Zeb’s predicament. Everyone else, troopers and officers alike, ignored them.

Ezra couldn’t help thinking of Lothal. Or rather, Lothal lampooned itself into his thoughts again. If it was this easy to sneak into any complex, Ezra would petition the rebels try it on his homeworld next.

“All right, spectres,” came Hera’s voice over their communicators, “I’ll watch the doors from here. Call when you can.” Sabine and Ezra muted their comms as one.

-0-

Stormtrooper armor felt cheap to Sabine. Less protective. Too bulky. But on the other hand, nobody paid attention to stormtroopers.

The bulbous Imperial Complex loomed over them, the front door only steps away and no one had stopped them yet. This might just work.

Chopper rolled into the Complex ahead of the group, looking unaffiliated as always. Among the stormtroopers already there, standing around a front desk of sorts, a gray-clad officer halted their progress.

“What’s this?” None of them noticed Chopper wheel behind the desk and plug into the first port he came across.

“It’s a… hairless Wookiee,” Ezra’s distorted voice said. Sabine and Zeb both looked at him. “He resisted arrest, so we’re bringing him in.”

“Non-human scum thinking they’re better than the rest of us,” said the officer, the expression on his face scrunched as if Zeb had personally wronged him. “Take him to the detention level.”

While Ezra gave a stalling confirmation, Chopper unplugged and rolled in the direction they were to follow.

Aside from furtive glances by other Imperials at Zeb, no one questioned two stormtroopers escorting a non-human in binders toward the interior turbolifts, even if those stormtroopers wore ill-fitting armor. Zeb was such a deterrent that no other Imperial wanted to enter the same lift as them, even though a group of all kinds of uniforms were waiting for their chance to use one.

Chopper punched in the number and they stopped at a level midway up the Complex, where a guardroom surrounded with screens sat between the turbolifts and the hallway of detention cells.

All three Imperials behind the monitoring desk started as Zeb exited the lift.

“That’s a… _hairless_ Wookie?” the officer asked, eyes round. The ground floor must’ve alerted them. “Doesn’t look like a Wookie.”

Ezra broke from his position to approach the desk. With the Imperials’ attention locked on Zeb, Sabine didn’t have to assist in a diversion, but it couldn’t hurt.

“I hear they’re a rare variety,” she said. “From the Unknown Regions.”

Ezra waved a hand near enough to all of them. “Your replacements are here. You’re off duty now.”

The officer’s eyes went glassy, and the two helmeted Imperials wobbled. “Off duty now,” they muttered in various stages of completion. They all shuffled to the lift as Sabine removed her helmet.

“Since when could you mind trick multiple people at once?” she asked.

“I guess I’m just getting the hang of it.”

Plugging into the main console, Chopper announced which cells held prisoners as he opened all of the doors. While Sabine settled behind the desk to start her own slicing, Zeb dropped the binders from his wrists and shot into the corridor before Ezra had even removed his helmet. The Lasat pushed past the stream of prisoners rushing for the control room.

“Where are they?” called Zeb from the end of the passage, the echoes making his voice even more hollow and sad. His footsteps thudded back to the control desk, where the prisoners—all non-humans, about ten of them—gaggled.

“What happened to the Lasats?” he asked. When the prisoners just exchanged glances, Zeb pounded his own chest. “Where are the prisoners who look like me?”

“There was only one left,” said a Devaronian. “They took her away a day or more ago, probably to the laboratory.”

Sabine winced but continued digging into the system. The hairs on Zeb’s shoulders stood straight up.

“What level is that?!” he growled.

“I don’t know!” the Devaronian said, shuffling further back into the crowd.

“Nobody knows,” said a Rodian. “Anyone taken to the lab never returns.”

From behind the security terminal, Chopper beeped a string of coordinates.

“Up four levels, last door on the left,” Ezra interpreted. Zeb grabbed his bo-rifle from Sabine and slung it over his own back, striding for the turbolift doors.

“Zeb!” Ezra called after him, shoving his helmet back on. “We can’t blow this yet, slow down!” They left Sabine and Chopper in the room to parse through information. The lift took off.

Sabine sighed as an angry beep denied her keyword search of “arc-pulse generator” in the Complex’s records. This terminal wasn’t allowed to access specific information on Mandalore like she hoped it would. Chopper would certainly help to search far faster than she could, but Sabine knew she had to be in the Complex’s datacenter if she wanted access to any reports of a higher classification than unclassified. She could ask Chopper where that was, but her going off for intel that only benefitted herself felt too much like Hera chasing after her family’s Kalikori. Sabine already knew how that ended.

“Better go with them, Chop. Somebody has to save their skins.”

His beeps bordered on indignant, asking what she’d be doing in the meantime.

“Preparing the exit strategy.”

-0-

The turbolift doors opened to a darker level; Ezra couldn’t see much at all through the tint of his visor. Zeb strode forward without a problem. There was a different feeling up here, a hum of dread that brought the feel of an abandoned station to Ezra’s mind. A medical station. Ezra pushed forward with a shiver.

As if Zeb shared his thought, he shouldered his blaster in the ready position, his steps forward more careful.

“Did any of that intel about this place say what the laboratory was for?” Ezra asked.

“It conveniently left that part out,” grunted Zeb.

“So, be ready for anything?”

“Except for us, _anything_ just keeps getting broader all the time,” said Zeb. Ezra would’ve loved to have his lightsaber in his hands at this moment, to feel like he had a better chance to defend himself from _anything_ than with his stormtrooper blaster. But Chopper hid his weapon inside his cranky little body, and the droid stayed—

A triumphant beep sounded from behind, making both Ezra and Zeb jump. But it was just Chopper, rolling out of the turbolift.

“With as busy as the rest of the complex is,” Zeb said when the droid caught up to them, “isn’t it weird there’s nobody on this level?” The three of them pushed forward together.

They reached the end of the hall and Zeb punched the panel next to the last door on the left. It refused to budge. Chopper rolled up and plugged in. The door swished open.

The room inside was bright with a clinical coldness. Measuring equipment and medical monitoring technology scattered across the room, and a med droid stood hunched on standby in the corner. In the middle of the room were thin beds the rebellion had in their own medbays, one occupied by a large figure. And in front of it, at odds with the rest of the room, stood a creature in all black, numerous tentacles sprouting from his head.

He turned, and eyes as large as fists stared at the rebels.

“It’s called a buzzer,” he said. “Use it.”

An unfortunately familiar feeling hit Ezra all at once. _Inquisitor._

“Chopper!”

A compartment on the droid’s body sprang open and catapulted a lightsaber hilt into the air. Blaster discarded followed by his helmet, Ezra reached out to summon his hilt straight into his hands. Zeb didn’t pause to ask what was going on. By the time the red of the Inquisitor’s lightsaber hummed alive, Zeb already held his crackling bostaff in both paws.

“Looks like I’ll have good news to tell the Grand Inquisitor after all,” the Nautolan said through a wide smile.

“If you survive this,” Ezra said.

“Let’s not give him an opportunity,” growled Zeb, bristling.

A precognitive ripple in the Force expanded from the Inquisitor. Barely a second later his spinning lightsaber shot forward on its own. Ezra jumped in front of Zeb, blocking him from both red blades. The Inquisitor summoned his weapon back to him. He and Ezra slowly circled, leaving the med beds in favor of the open space in the back of the room. The figure lying on the bed really was a Lasat, though Ezra couldn’t see details from where he was. A shrill gasp ripped from Zeb, though, who flew to the figure, disconnecting machine wires and tubes.

Chopper plugged into the only terminal in the room, and he called out to push the Inquisitor toward the back wall. So Ezra did.

He lunged forward, his green blade slashing before it even made contact with the Inquisitor’s. Their lightsabers collided and hissed. This Inquisitor brushed off Ezra’s attacks like he was playing with him—or just warming up. Somewhere in there, between the parries and the blur of three blades, the Inquisitor managed to add a foot, kicking Ezra back to his starting point. The red lightsaber spun as the Inquisitor prowled back and forth like a predator, waiting for the next attack.

“I could use some help!” Ezra called over his shoulder.

A roar shook the room. Zeb sprang in between the two Force users, bostaff swinging. He knocked the Inquisitor off balance and pushed the advantage. His crackling staff slammed the Inquisitor as the Nautolan tried to find his footing.

But he did find his footing, and then Zeb was lifted straight into the air by the Force. Ezra charged in. He’d never felt Zeb so vengeful before, and Ezra fed off it. His green lightsaber slashed, always advancing, pushing the Inquisitor back. Four strokes later, Zeb—recovered—surged forward and swung his staff straight into the Inquisitor, cracking the air out of him. The Inquisitor flew into the back wall and slid to the floor. His lightsaber hilt dropped disengaged next to him.

“WAH! Wopwahh!” At Chopper’s signal, Ezra jumped back and Force pulled Zeb—and at the ultimate last second, the Inquisitor’s lightsaber—with him just as a ray shield activated, separating the room from wall to wall.

The Inquisitor staggered to his feet, wheezing, “Well played! Caught me in my own cage.”

“Enough stalling. Let’s go!” Zeb said. He stowed his weapon and returned to the medical beds where he swept up the other Lasat in both arms.

Ezra had a feeling that merely capturing the Inquisitor wouldn’t be enough; but he couldn’t feasibly strike the Nautolan down without first dropping the shield. So he had to leave the fight there and back up toward the door.

He was the last one out of the room, following Chopper and Zeb as they rushed down the corridor. Ezra didn't even bother to retrieve his stormtrooper helmet; there was no more use of disguise at this point.

“Something tells me getting out isn’t going to be as easy as getting in,” Ezra said as they piled into the turbolift. He cast a glance Zeb’s way to find the Lasat with a thousand-meter stare hollowing his wide eyes.

“Yeah, the Inquisitor scared me, too,” Ezra admitted in a much smaller voice.

“It’s not that,” Zeb said. His voice sounded as distant as his gaze. But his attention snapped back to the present and he hefted the body in his arms. “This… this is Princess Aisatsan. I thought the entire royal family had been wiped out. I… never expected…”

Ezra lost any idea of what to say at a time like this, but then again so did Zeb. Ezra laid a hand on his furry shoulder for the rest of their descent.

-0-

Enough vendors existed across the street from the Imperial Complex that Hera had no problem loitering within sight of the front gates. She meandered from stall to stall while a steady stream of foot and vehicular traffic camouflaged her in the crowd.

Imperial presence looked much different here than it did on Lothal, perhaps because Mygeeto was drastically more populated. The Empire did not have the amount of troops necessary to keep the planet in line, unlike on Lothal. So here Imperial presence remained more or less a suggestion, as obtrusive as its own Complex shoved into the existing city which continued to move on around it.

The Empire’s routines turned predictable after the second patrol, and as Hera waited for the rest of her team to complete the mission, her mind drifted back to her earlier conversation with Kanan. After they talked about his abilities, after he had told her how emotion was as much a part of a person as their Force signature to his eyes, he looked at her with that mask—through the mask—and told her she should remove herself from this mission, too.

“I know it’s your least favorite thing to do, but you need to rest,” he told her. “You need time to process what’s happened.”

It would’ve been nice to say seeing death was uncommon for her. But it wasn’t. Hera wanted to brush off Kanan’s comments as an overreaction, to say that she _did_ have time to process Ryloth… until she realized Ryloth was one sleep cycle ago. And a very bad sleep cycle at that.

It already felt like a lifetime ago.

“Spectre Two?” Sabine’s voice said over her comms. “I’ve got a distraction set, but we’re gonna need a fast way outta here.”

Hera blinked herself free from her muddying thoughts. “Understood, Spectre Five.”

She left the safety of the crowd and crossed the street. The large gate that led to the ground vehicle staging area stood wide open, as it had since Hera started watching from the vendors. Walkers and foot patrols had come and gone but the gate never closed.

Across the staging area, Imperials were busy unloading cargo, and as nobody felt like looking her way, Hera slipped inside. While running was a dead giveaway, so was her bright orange flight suit. So she ran to the nearest vehicle, an armored prisoner transport, and darted into the cab.

Her first order of business was to disable the locator beacon, which was also the easiest order of business since she’d done it so many times in her life. Next was to hotwire the vehicle, which wasn’t the same as airborne vehicles, and took longer. Just as she touched two exposed wires together, an explosion shot a hole through the outer wall of the Complex, and echoes of secondary explosions shook from unseen places.

The orderly Imperials suddenly scattered in a frenzy; even through the thick transport walls, Hera could hear their shrill shouting, confused and panicky. Figures in white, black, and shades in between dashed to their vehicles, or to defensible locations. With an aggravated whine, Hera finally succeeded and the vehicle rattled to life.

The prisoner transport bolted forward toward the large hole, directly into the line of enemy fire which pinged uselessly off its armor. Hera opened the door the moment Zeb appeared flanked by two helmetless stormtroopers… and a host of aliens. Hera was about to mention the tight fit when all the aliens ran for the freedom of New Jygat.

Chopper was unsurprisingly the first one in. Sabine and Ezra piled in next, smiling atop their armor, followed by Zeb with a Lasat in his arms.

“Just one?” Hera asked.

“Yeah, go!” cried Zeb.

The door slammed shut and she sped toward the gate, dodging AT-DP fire. Lights flashed along the fence. For the first time that day, the gate was actually closing.

“Hang on!” Hera shouted, slamming down on the pedal. A line of stormtroopers stretched in front of the stolen prisoner transport, then thought better of it and dove clear of Hera. An AT-DP laser bolt hit directly behind them, because the sudden lift of the rear of the transport dropped Hera’s stomach straight to the floor—but gave them the boost they needed to screech between the closing gate into the freedom of the street. Civilian vehicles swerved around them as Hera maneuvered into a lane—the wrong lane, but a lane—leaving a cacophony of angry honks in her wake.

“Was one Lasat all that was left?” Hera asked over the roar of the military engine.

“After a year since the initial report, finding one is good enough,” grunted Zeb, holding the Lasat close.

“She’s a princess!” Ezra chirped. And despite the Lasat’s unconsciousness, Ezra’s optimism permeated the entire cab.

Hera allowed herself a breath of relief. The Empire wouldn’t be following in vehicles; those were all locked behind the slowest moving gate on the planet. They would have to pursue on foot, so as long as they returned to the _Ghost_ quickly enough—

A red blade shot through the roof of the vehicle. Everyone ducked as it carved a burning circle. The blade retracted and the cut out piece went flying, revealing a black-clad Nautolan crouching atop the vehicle.

Even with her attention half on the road ahead, Hera felt his brown eyes hone in on her as he inspected the occupants.

“Hey, mama. What’re you doing after this?” the Inquisitor asked.

Hera’s mouth could only drop, but Ezra jumped straight onto the roof of the vehicle.

“By the way, the Inquisitors are back!” Sabine informed Hera. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t follow.” And with a boost from Zeb, she was gone, armor and all, through the hole in the roof.

-0-

The wind lashed over the transport, and the way that it rattled under her boots, Sabine knew Hera was driving faster than the standard speed limit for Imperial vehicles.

Lightsabers were already engaged in hitting and repulsing one another as Sabine found her feet. Perhaps leaving her lightsaber-resistant armor on the ship wasn’t the best idea, now. She aimed her stolen blaster at the Inquisitor—and she desperately wished she had two—only for a pair of floating droids to descend into view. Spindly legs hung from thin, round bodies. Sabine froze at the sight of them.

“You’ve got those things, too?” Ezra cried over the wind. “What, did you steal them from that other Inquisitor?”

“The creepy one?” asked Sabine, shaking free of the cold fear of that abandoned medical station. She took aim and shot, but the droids veered out of the way.

“Yeah, Seventh!” Ezra said.

The Inquisitor parried Ezra’s next blow wide, and the only thing that kept him from swinging his red blade into Ezra’s defenseless body were the direct bolts from Sabine he had to deflect. “I made them! She stole them from _me_ ,” the Inquisitor said.

With one mind, Ezra and the Inquisitor returned to clashing sabers. Sabine never lowered her blaster, but she couldn’t get a sure shot with Ezra weaving in the way. The two floating droids veered toward Ezra. This time Sabine scored a hit on each one and they flopped to the street below.

“Push him off!” she ordered. “We can’t let him ride all the way to our ship!” One green twirl later and the Inquisitor went flying to the ground. Sabine and Ezra jumped after him. Sabine had hoped her armor would absorb most of the shock of hitting the ground. But, no, as she rolled, she just felt plastoid stabbing her at every opportunity.

She pushed herself to her feet, hurting all over.

The road was as deserted as a populated planet could get; curious crowds were amassing a stone’s throw away. The prisoner transport had stopped all traffic, and even after it had passed, the civilian vehicles refused to move with obvious fighters in the street. Someone was sure to alert the Empire of the exact location of a dangerous skirmish—the fight needed to end before that.

The Inquisitor stood, grinning widely.

“Don’t act like you’re having fun with this,” Ezra muttered.

“But it _is_ fun. And there aren’t any ray shields to help you out, here.” All of his headtails dashed as the Inquisitor bolted forward. Ezra met him in a clash of lightsaber, and Sabine circled well out of reach of their fight, trying to get a better angle on their opponent. The Inquisitor never gave her an opening. With his double bladed lightsaber, he maneuvered Ezra around to always shield himself from Sabine.

Sabine had to admit Ezra fought with a ferocity she hadn’t seen before, but the Inquisitor outclassed him. And Ezra would tire eventually.

That’s when she noticed a standalone advertisement hovering over their heads. She shot at it, destroying the antigrav boosters. The holographic ad flickered out, leaving a heavy frame to plummet down. She just had to hope Ezra’s senses would pick up on… everything… and opened fire on the dueling pair. Ezra ducked. The Inquisitor’s lightsaber spun—actually spun—to deflect every shot, and Ezra jolted backwards just in time to avoid the heavy ad frame slamming into the ground.

Duracrete dust flooded the area. When it cleared, the two spectres found the Inquisitor splayed on the ground not far from the broken frame.

Ezra panted as his lightsaber disengaged. “He’s not dead. Are we just gonna leave him?”

“We’re not taking him back to Atollon,” Sabine said, nearing him. This wasn’t like the Reklam situation with Commander Titus, or her mission to Concord Dawn.

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” intoned Ezra. “If we leave him alive, he’ll just be a problem in the future.”

“Then we’ll deal with him again,” Sabine said. It chilled her to hear him sound so unlike a Jedi. She pulled at his arm, and thanks to the crowd closing in, Ezra took her hint and followed her.

They slipped down different streets in the direction of the spaceport, shedding armor as they went until they were down to their own clothes. Two steps into the hangar bay where the _Ghost_ hummed idling like a welcome beacon, Ezra skidded to a halt, a sharp gasp snatched from him.

“You okay?” Sabine asked from the boarding ramp where Chopper had come to meet them. She still held her confiscated blaster.

“We’ve got company.”

“Check on Zeb and Hera,” Sabine ordered over her shoulder as she ran back down the ramp, taking a spot next to Ezra. Chopper, always ready to flee a fight, rolled into the ship without hesitation.

Ezra’s lightsaber sprang to life. Two figures closed in, stalking out of the shadows to reveal they were Lasats. One had a blaster, the other brandished a bo-rifle. Sabine raised her own blaster.

“What do you want?” Ezra called out.

“You took our friend. We want her back,” returned a female voice.

“We saved her from an Inquisitor!” Ezra said.

“You kidnapped her just like he did!” argued the male.

“We’re here because our friend wanted to find his people. He came looking for you.”

As if on cue, Zeb appeared on the ramp, bo-rifle in hand and intent to defeat whatever Chopper had warned him about. But instead, his face turned to astonishment, and the two strangers lowered their weapons at the sight of him.

“Captain Orrelios?” the female gasped.

-0-

Lothal’s factory stood quiet when Thrawn toured it after hours, lights dimmed to the bare minimum for safety. Speeders and walkers lay in whatever part of completion they were when the working shift ended. Unexpected to Thrawn was the appearance of Agent Kallus in the walker assembly wing, shining a light with one hand while his other held a datapad.

“Agent, good evening,” Thrawn greeted, and Kallus jumped. A self-conscious flush lit his face, visible on the infrared spectrum Thrawn could see.

The last time Thrawn had talked with Colonel Yularen, the human had begrudgingly arrived at the level-headed concession that even if Agent Kallus had passed on Thrawn’s probe droid plan to him, it would still have been rejected on the grounds that Governor Pryce and Lothal simply could not afford it. But Agent Kallus’ reaction to Thrawn bore the sting of a man reprimanded by his superior.

Kallus cleared his throat in belated recovery. “Grand Admiral, what brings you to the factory so late?”

“I read troubling reports about malfunctions with vehicles assembled here. I came to see for myself.”

“Yes, well, be assured the ISB is looking closely into this.”

“Who are your suspects?” asked Thrawn.

Kallus hesitated. “Any of the workers could have done this. Now that it is clearly a pattern, we are tracing the vehicles back to the worker stations which made each part. You can imagine that’s a lengthy investigation, sir.”

“Is any of this reminiscent of the _Ghost_ crew? Do we know if they have returned, or if they in any way instigated this?”

“It is too early to tell.”

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed as he took in Kallus. “If you need assistance in your investigation, I will of course share any information I have that can further your goals, Agent. And I expect that same generosity to be reciprocated, should I ask.”

“Without question.” It came across as less sincere when Kallus replied with teeth gritted.

Before Thrawn arrived on Lothal, Kallus was the highest ranking expert on rebel activity; it was only natural for him to feel as if his toes were stepped on.

“I hope that if any competition exists between us, it is only friendly, as we are both working towards realizing the Empire’s goals. This can only be achieved through cooperation,” Thrawn said. Kallus didn’t reply, so Thrawn continued. “In fact, there is a matter I would like to discuss with you. It involves the project which redirects military personnel and resources from Capital City to a classified location on Lothal. Governor Pryce is aware of it, but my own access codes do not have a high enough clearance to access specifics.”

Kallus started, expression hardening in genuine surprise.  “I’ve heard of no such thing.”

“Curious,” said Thrawn. If Colonel Yularen had not proven himself to Thrawn to be a capable investigator, the ISB would look terribly inept. “This is all I know, from a military perspective. Anything you discover on the matter will be truly enlightening.”

Kallus bowed his head and looked about ready to scuttle off in the opposite direction.

“There is one more matter you might be able to assist me with,” Thrawn said. “The Imperial records on the Lasat culture are dismissive and dry. I was hoping, from your personal experiences, you might have more well-rounded perspective from their home world. I am eager to learn about them.”

“As you wish.”

“No need to rush. You could pass that information along at Centares.”

The human again looked self-conscious. “I don’t have a high enough rank to be invited.”

“And Governor Pryce did not extend her plus one invitation to you?”

“She did not.”

With as much Kallus and Pryce acted as if they were in each other’s confidences, Thrawn assumed he would see Kallus at Centares one way or another. “Then consider yourself invited, Agent.”

Kallus could only stammer confused thanks.

Inclining his head, Thrawn continued on his way toward section A-2, where the TIE Defender project was in full swing. There was no faulty equipment or shoddy workmanship here; the bright lights in this section illuminated several new sleek fighters nearly fully assembled. The assembly lines still rolled at this late hour, making up for the time spent on Thrawn’s stringent security specifications. It had been an order imposed to bring Thrawn’s project to the Emperor’s attention as soon as possible; he never planned to unveil it at Centares. But now, this around the clock work schedule would produce a working TIE just in time.

Thrawn returned to his office upon the completion of the factory tour, casting a longer look in the direction of the Kalikori than the graffitied barrier wall on his approach to the desk. He searched through his holocommunication terminal for a contact he hadn’t reached out to in awhile, and called that frequency. The scrunched face of a Noghri soon appeared over his desk.

“Rukh, I have a task for you here on Lothal. I need a location found.”

 _“I will embark immediately.”_  

-0-

If the Lasats’ reaction to Zeb surprised Ezra, then Zeb’s reaction to the Lasats—pulling both of them into crushing hugs—removed any lingering doubt that, more so than finding his people this time, he had found friends.

Ezra hooked his lightsaber onto his belt as Hera’s voice came over their comms that they had to leave _now._

“Is anyone else with you?” Zeb asked his people. They shook their heads, and Zeb invited them aboard. Ezra and Sabine exchanged glances, but didn’t interfere with any of the three large, lumbering creatures. Instead they waited until everyone was inside the cargo bay with the boarding ramp safely shut and Hera taking off before Sabine spoke up.

“Zeb, you know them?”

His face was all teeth; not even jokes at Ezra’s or Chopper’s expense had made him smile so wide before.

“This is Bisho,” Zeb said, indicating the lean blue one, “and Rubha, both honor guards back in the day.” The gray-purple female bowed her head in acknowledgement.

“Captain, it’s so good to see you—we thought you were dead!” Bisho said.

“How fares the princess?” asked Rubha, not as excitedly.

“I’ve put her in my bunk to rest. Follow me.” He led the two out of the cargo bay.

Sabine took to the ladder when the Lasats were up.

“Where are you going?” Ezra asked.

“To look through the data I collected from the Complex.” Her response was so impatient that Ezra wondered if she was still mad at him for Reklam.

Chopper was long gone, and Ezra…

Lothal’s expansive grasslands flashed to his mind, as if Ezra stood at the top of his old tower home overlooking the capital. But the city looked darker; _felt_ darker.

A series of blinks brought the cargo bay back into focus and Ezra held his head. Was his homesickness getting severe, or had that been a vision?

Ezra climbed into the deserted main cabin and found the couch. Perhaps his fear at the reemergence of the Inquisitors reminded him of the first Inquisitor he ever met on his home planet. But that couldn’t be it; he’d never _seen_ Lothal like that in his mind before, and he’d been thinking about home a lot lately.

Ezra played with lacing and unlacing his fingers atop the dejarik board, letting the Force crackle between his fingertips, steering his mind to the present when it kept wandering back to the Inquisitor.

They hadn’t seen the Inquisitors in months, and Ezra, stupidly, had started to assume that maybe they really were gone. Of course it was important to defeat the Sith, and he fully supported Maul’s venture to find more secrets to help them, but somewhere in the back of his mind Ezra really assumed that maybe they had really been defeated at Malachor, or maybe they were busy on the opposite rim of the galaxy. His time stalling to get back the Sith holocron all stemmed from the fact that he wasn’t expecting them to rear their faces again.

Now they were back.

And Ezra had nothing to give Maul, except bad news.

Voices broke into his thoughts as the three Lasats migrated into the cabin. Since the princess still resided in Zeb’s bunk, Ezra was left with fewer options of where to find a quiet place. Anyone could walk into the galley, or the cargo hold. The _Phantom II_ was a possibility, but when Ezra left the main cabin, he wound up in Kanan’s room. The door closed behind him and it was like the rest of the ship just didn’t exist. Ezra knelt in the middle of the floor. He steadied his breathing and reached out. Searching for that connection.

The room went cold. Ezra heard breathing out of time with his own, and opened his eyes to see Maul kneeling in front of him.

“This is unusual, for you to reach out to _me,_ apprentice.” He sounded anything but displeased.

“The Inquisitors are back,” Ezra blurted. As realization dawned on Maul’s face, Ezra continued. “I met one on Mygeeto, and he mentioned a Grand Inquisitor.”

“You were hunted down by this Inquisitor?”

“No, we ran into him doing some sort of experiment or something.”

“Curious that they haven’t continued the search for myself or you. They must have a new prerogative now; new orders from the Emperor.”

“So what do we do?”

Maul eyes looked brighter, more intense, as they gazed directly at Ezra. “We use the Sith holocron.”

Everything about Ezra shuddered to a halt; only an impending sinking feeling brought him back. “I haven’t been able to get it yet.”

“Give me this Bendu’s location and I will reclaim it myself,” Maul said.

“No!” Ezra’s voice echoed in the small cabin, surprising both of them. He couldn’t hand out the coordinates to Atollon like that, and that decision sparked dissention inside of him. Of course he trusted Maul—Maul had been more of a master to him over the past half a year than Kanan. Maul pushed him the same as Kanan had, though his focus was more on understanding the reasons behind Jedi and Sith actions, leading to a deeper knowledge for Ezra. Yet Ezra couldn’t reconcile this teacher with the same attacker who blinded Kanan; and the last thing he wanted to do was bring those two together again.

“The Inquisitors have already returned,” Maul said through his teeth. “We are out of time, apprentice.”

“Give me a chance to get it back, first. I’ll go to the Bendu myself. I promise.”

-0-

Hera’s thoughts still spun like a Ryloth cyclone as the _Ghost_ slid out of hyperspace to the welcoming sight of Atollon. Of all the missions for Kanan to sit out, why did it have to be this one? The thought of Sabine and Ezra fending one off gave her nothing but happiness and a supreme reassurance that they were capable of handling themselves, but directly on the heels of that high, dread followed. More Inquisitors meant Kanan and Ezra would leave in search of more temples, more Force secrets, more missions she couldn’t help with. Another Malachor. Could she handle that?

They landed, and as Hera disembarked, the first thought that came to mind was that Atollon shouldn’t have been this peaceful. Someone on this base should’ve been be as stressed as her crew was. But the pilots ran diagnostic checks on their ships with no hurry while other rebels calmly stocked a cruiser for an upcoming mission.

“No, no, no!” AP-5 cried in his distinct monotone, shuffling down the ramp of that same cruiser. “You cannot stow food rations next to munitions! This is a clear violation of every—” Well, at least someone was similarly worked up.

Hera found Commander Sato near the base holoterminal.

He listened to her account of the mission with an already grave expression, and when she got to the part about the Inquisitor he looked physically pained.

“I hope we can count on our Jedi to hold these Inquisitors at bay?” he said. Hera stared at him with her perfected unreadable expression, choosing not to interpret that as an order. Sato continued, “If there is no further information on this mission, let us discuss your next task.”

“With respect, sir, I think my crew needs time to rest. They’ve been through a lot.”

“You’ll have time. Rebel command has given you permission to infiltrate the Centares Gala,” Sato said without a hint of satisfaction. “But I stress that the permission only extends to yourself. This operation would’ve been out of our hands completely if Dodanna’s own people were available, but as this event is last minute, command believes your training is sufficient for this.”

It wasn’t the best praise Hera had heard in her life.

“They’ll provide us with intel objectives to gather over the next few days. They were going to provide us with a nondescript Imperial ship, but Sabine already procured a shuttle for us that will work.”

“So what you’re saying is they’re taking this mission pretty seriously,” Hera said.

“They believe you’ll be able to learn more about the Imperial plans they’ve been trying to collect on.”

Hera pursed her lips. Her goal with this mission was to find more information about the Lothal factory, but already Yavin was superseding her mission with one of their own.

“We only have a short time to get ready and many scenarios to account for, so from now on, the Centares mission takes precedence,” Sato said. He paused, and for a moment his rank seemed to wash away. “But I believe you’re right, and what you need right now is rest. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.”

Hera returned to the _Ghost_ to find it loud with reminiscing Lasats. Their princess hadn’t woken up yet, and until she did, Hera expected Zeb’s people would refrain from searching out Lira San. She walked right through the center of them in the main cabin to head to her personal room, and none of the three noticed her, too busy as they were sharing experiences and good stories.

Her crew may have met an Inquisitor, but they’d gotten away safely and their mission had been a complete success. She needed to reflect on the positive outcomes. If Hera continued her habit of disproportionately focusing on the bad, she knew in time she would starve her own hope in the rebellion out of existence. And then what would be left of her?

Hera kicked off her boots and climbed into her bunk. Exhaustion, the kind that she felt in the middle of her bones, hit her the minute she stretched out over her covers. Sleep came quickly, to be interrupted just as fast by glowing red eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is... late. D: I'm so sorry for making y'all wait this long, and thank you for sticking around!


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